ENID, Okla. — After making a quick trip back to his pickup, David Hunter hoisted the cast-steel pick end of a 2-foot-long sledgehammer to pop off the metal lid of a rusted manhole outside the city’s water booster station off Imo Road.
Sitting next to a ladder about 12 feet into the ground was a 30-inch-wide transmission line, busy moving thousands of gallons of raw water a day from nearby Ames to Enid.
“Makes you feel like you’re Thor or something,” he said before closing the lid back on, prompting the city’s water foreman, Jay Graves, to remind him he’s not supposed to do the physical labor.
“Oh, that’s right, I’m not supposed to do stuff. Mostly because I break things,” Hunter said, laughing again.
The 30-inch transmission line coming from Ames is shown in this 12-foot-deep manhole at the city of Enid’s booster station on Imo Road. (Alexander Ewald / Enid News & Eagle)
This specific transmission line had a major break in late-2020, not long after the city of Enid’s public utilities director started his job.
Such transmission lines from the city’s well fields in Ames and Drummond to the southwest pass through the booster station, which sits at a fork in the waterlines going to either of the city’s two water treatment plants.
The station, reactivated in 2006 after a 30-year dormancy, acts as a giant railroad switch for the city’s water supply, diverting water from one plant to another as needed.
But its four pumps are rarely used today, the two men explained. If something goes wrong at the booster station, then that creates a potential liability for the city’s water supply, Hunter said.
A new water plant being constructed for the Kaw Lake pipeline will change how water is pumped to the city, he explained, so the booster station would probably go obsolete.
“My memory fails me to what’s gonna happen when it’s all said and done,” he said about the station. “I don’t think we’ll have the need for this, is the answer, but I’m not totally sure.”
Public Utilities Director David Hunter stands in the basement of the city of Enid’s booster station on Imo Road on Dec. 30, 2021. (Alexander Ewald / Enid News & Eagle)
Less of a balancing act
Once the switch is flipped on Enid’s massive Kaw Lake water supply program, possibly taking the Imo booster station offline wouldn’t be the only major change to the city’s so-called “invisible infrastructure.”
Along with supplying Enid with a consistent source of potable water, the project, which recently began construction, is also expected to alleviate the city utilities staff’s burden of constantly balancing and maintaining the city’s water sources located throughout Northwest Oklahoma.
The city’s third water treatment plant, already being built on West Chestnut next door to one of the city’s other centers, would receive nearly twice as much water as its sibling plants already do — more than doubling Enid’s daily average water supply.
This plant, which would need its own staffing, would specifically treat the average 10.5 million gallons of water expected to come every day from Kaw Lake 70 miles away.
Enid’s main treatment plant, also located off West Chestnut, processes an average 5 million gallons of water a day; a fifth as much water is treated at the secondary treatment plant.
Construction began on the plant last fall, while the city has yet to commence building the actual pipeline connecting it to the lake.
Hunter said Enid’s definition of raw water would change practically overnight when the project is done in the next several years.
The city currently uses only water from the ground. Kaw’s surface water, though, necessitated building an entirely new treatment plant, as surface water is regulated differently under the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act.
Unlike Enid’s current groundwater sources, surface water algae, bacteria and other wildlife are found in the reservoir water. Rain and storms also can churn up a lake’s dirt and sediment, which could change the water quality and require additional treatment, Hunter said.
Enid’s wells are relatively shallow compared with the rest of the country, but weather forecasts don’t affect them as quickly as a surface water source, he said.
Water pump control panels are shown at the city of Enid’s secondary water treatment plant on West Chesnut on Dec. 30, 2021. (Alexander Ewald / Enid News & Eagle)
“Stuff that happens under the surface has a level of protection and separation from any type of contamination versus the surfacing (water),” Hunter said. “If it happens, it happens tomorrow.”
Well fields are prioritized with low nitrate counts, and the run order of each plant’s pumps is based on the nitrates in the order, Graves said.
The longer a well is pumped, the more nitrate builds up in the supply, he said, so city water workers have to seesaw which wells are turned in order to to meet drinking water standards.
Partly because of this balancing act, not all of Enid’s water wells run at the same time, Graves said.
This map provided by the city of Enid from its SCADA system shows the city’s 400 miles of water transmission lines from its well fields in Cleo Springs, Ames, Drummond and Ringwood to Enid’s two treatment plants.
Nitrates are monitored through daily measurements as per state water quality requirements. High levels can result from improper well construction, well location, overuse of chemical fertilizers or improper disposal of human and animal waste, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
‘Doing it all ourselves’
Enid is already one of (if not the) largest groundwater users in the state, according to the Oklahoma Water Resources Board. The city obtains its water from a total 166 wells — five well fields are developed in eight locations, from three groundwater aquifers in Northwest Oklahoma.
Pumps of varying horsepower and size at well field plants in Cleo Springs, Ames and Ringwood push the water through several transmission systems to Enid’s two treatment plants, whose pumps then push the then-treated water to the city’s 50,000 residents through nearly 400 miles of main lines.
With the western treatment plant serving that half of the city, the central plant at the Enid Service Center complex also serves customers north and east of Enid, including outside consumers such as Koch Fertilizer’s plant near Enid and the Oxbow Calcining plant near Kremlin.
Hunter said other cities of Enid’s size tend to contract to a larger entity to handle that work and may have an additional pump, too.
Enid’s well fields throughout Northwest Oklahoma each have between 25 to 30 wells each, which cycle in and out of operation throughout the year.
A similarly sized city, though, would have around 30 wells for the entire water supply.
“We’re doing it all ourselves,” Hunter said. “So Enid is unique because not that many cities are doing it all.”
Hunter said the size of Enid’s operations can be a weakness with limited city staffing to cover such a wide range of water well fields.
On the other hand, he said, if a specific well field goes down — like when the transmission line coming from Ames was damaged in late-2020 — the city won’t have to bear the full brunt of suddenly being without water, and staff can easily turn on another group of wells elsewhere.
To ease the city’s burden, staff use the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to electronically monitor the ongoing status of the two treatment plants, out-of-town well plants and well pumps, surge towers and elevated storage tanks.
City staff also use SCADA to remotely operate the wells in the fields largely in Cleo Springs, Ames, Ringwood and Drummond. Because the city also serves Vance Air Force Base, it has restricted access into the system as well.
This screenshot shows the city of Enid’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, which utilities staff use to electronically operate and monitor much of the city’s massive water system both within and outside of the city. (Screenshot provided by the city of Enid)
None of Enid’s 41 wells drawing water from the Enid Isolated Terrace Aquifer — located underneath the city itself — are connected to the system, Hunter said, because they were built so long ago and are in close proximity to the main treatment plant.
The city also barely uses the supply from the aquifer anymore, according to OWRB .
SCADA tracks the gallons per minute, pressure per square inch and chlorine levels, and its interface shows a switch similar to the ones at the actual plants and other buildings. It also tracks long-term well data, like whether a well has been running too much over the last week, six months or four years.
If the interface shows an error at one of the wells or plants — for example, if a part is broken or something is overflowing — SCADA will automatically page a utilities manager, sometimes as early as 2 a.m.
Errors can be one or a combination of communications failures; an electrical issue called “three-phase”; or an “overload,” when a plant or well house panel receives too much power.
Hunter said before SCADA, a man with a clipboard would go out to each well house, take a measurement, write it down and go to the next site.
An operations specialist still goes out every morning to all of the plants to check the electronics, though.
“Any time our guys have to go out manually or physically to a site, that’s lost time,” Hunter said. “So anything we can do with a click of a switch or a click of a mouse, that’s what we want.”
‘Not supposed to worry about it’
As daily demand for water increases, so does the supply, Hunter said — water use reflects natural, diurnal human habits and behavior.
Water usage begins to spike when people wake up and start flushing their toilets and making coffee, falling when they go to school and to work. An increase begins again when everyone comes home, makes dinner, washes dishes and again goes to the bathroom.
Summertime sees demand spike even more when additional city water is used to water lawns.
By design, certain plant pumps run while others sit on stand-by, as Graves explained. City staff will turn on more of the city’s wells to compensate for the need.
“People don’t realize how hard it is to keep invisible infrastructure invisible,” Hunter added. “You’re only supposed to get up in the morning, flush your toilet, take your shower, make your coffee. … You’re not supposed to worry about it.”
In February 2021, city staff responded to a large number of water line breaks as a result of the state’s major winter ice storm. Hunter said a lot of Enid’s water wells also froze up, and several’s cast-iron casings had cracked open. The entire Ringwood water plant also froze and cracked.
City total usage fell back to about 8 million gallons Thursday, following a sharp daily decline since Monday from unusually high levels stemming from the snowstorms.
By Feb. 18, citywide water usage had spiked to more than 12.4 million gallons a day, as more Enid residents were dripping their faucets en masse to prevent pipe breaks. The Cleo Springs well field was pumping at full capacity but was unable to keep up with demand as the Ringwood plant stayed down.
“It was similar to a summer in August,” Hunter said. “It was probably some ways more than we’d see in August, because it was just continual big breaks and then a continual big demand that just never shut off.”
In December 2021, the city averaged between 7.5 million to 8 million gallons of water, he said. According to a report commissioned by the city in 2009, a daily average of 18.45 MGD is expected to be used by 2050.
City staff have repaired five wells this past year, according to the mayor’s annual state of the city address Friday.
Over the last year and a half, the city has more regularly used the Ringwood plant, Graves said. However, many of the wells in Ringwood’s well field — already long considered a “drought-sensitive” field, thus operating only for a few months of the year — remain offline, as they still await repairs from the winter storm and a fire several years ago.
More stories in the News & Eagle will continue to look at the future ripple effects of the city’s Kaw Lake project on its nearby well fields.
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