As Oklahoma’s water supply faces pressure from increased groundwater use, state regulators are working to better track aquifer depletion and for the first time look to issue violation notices for unreported groundwater use.
Randy Dietz, a farmer who has lived west of Cleo Springs for 65 years, has witnessed the water decline.
“The water table is dropping drastically,” Dietz said. “You used to be able to get water anywhere where I live. I used to be able to dig a posthole three feet down and hit water, and there's no way that'll happen anymore.”
Dietz, who grows grass and wheat and raises cattle, said his own wells have not yet been affected. Still, he has seen neighboring farm ponds run dry and Cleo Springs lose a large portion of its water supply. Dietz blames it in part on heavy irrigation in the area, as farmers have started growing crops such as corn that require more water.
Concerns about diminishing groundwater in the Oglalla Acquifer can be seen across the state, as researchers say water is a difficult resource to monitor. State regulators acknowledge that most groundwater use is self-reported.
Because Oklahoma groundwater law is a mining law, not a conservation law, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, Oklahoma’s water resources planning and development agency, focuses more on permitting water and ensuring a controlled drawdown of aquifers than preventing depletion entirely.
The resources board conducts studies to determine the maximum annual yield of an aquifer, or how much groundwater can be withdrawn per year, then divides that amount among landowners based on their acreage.
“Our job is to ensure that people are drawing down the aquifers on a controlled, managed basis,” said Christopher Neel, water rights administration division chief for the board.
This can only be done when the amount of groundwater available and the amount being used are known. The state resources board estimates groundwater use with information gathered from aquifer studies. To track how much groundwater is used, it sends permit holders an annual request for a water use report.
This lack of consistent measurement makes it difficult to determine how much groundwater is being withdrawn, said Jerrod Smith, a hydrologist and groundwater modeling specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey Oklahoma-Texas Water Science Center.
“We never have enough data to make a perfect picture of what's going on in the aquifer, so we always wish we had more data,” Smith said. “'I’d say the biggest thing we always want is just more data of all different kinds.”
Oklahoma USGS researchers use stream flows, groundwater levels and precipitation data to build models to show how aquifers are working. Their studies typically examine 20 to 30 years of available data before projecting how an aquifer responds to future stresses.
“Every one of these projects we do, we're like getting a snapshot of what has happened in the last 30 years,” Smith said. “At the very least, we have a baseline of conditions, at least since we started monitoring, so a lot of times, when the aquifer was first getting developed, we don't have data.”
Groundwater is difficult to monitor because, unlike surface water, it cannot be directly seen or observed. Thus, researchers rely on groundwater wells to provide information on groundwater conditions.
Smith said whether drought-related groundwater declines or long-term withdrawal depletion has the bigger impact on groundwater depletion can vary by aquifer. For example, with the Ogallala Aquifer near the Panhandle, only about half an inch of rainfall every year is added back into the aquifer, while much more is taken out.
“At some point, the wells will end up going dry,” Smith said. “That's just the reality of it.”
This depletion can force farmers and ranchers to use supplemental feed and truck in extra water, all of which add costs to their operations.
Andrew Coppin, CEO of Ranchbot Monitoring Solutions, a company that gives ranchers tools to monitor their resources, said he recently spoke to Oklahoma farmers who had been impacted by the lack of water.
“Water, whether it's for livestock or growing a crop, if you don't have it, you've got to act differently, and all of the things that you have to do differently mean that you're eroding your margins,” Coppin said. “If you have to truck in water, that's a cost. If you have to truck in feed, that's a cost.”
Coppin said technology can help eliminate the guesswork.
“Every other sector on the planet is using data to make better- informed decisions, and agriculture and ranching is no different, even if they're a little late to the party,” Coppin said.
Coppin said he talked to an Oklahoma farmer who was thinking about changing how he ran things, from the plants he grew to his cattle operation, because he was gathering more data.
Still, decreased rainfall can be worrying for farmers who have seen their wells dry up.
“We can't irrigate forever if we're using groundwater, so these tough drought years are challenging,” Coppin said.
Dietz has seen the negative impacts that irrigation and aquifer depletion have on his community. He said the city of Enid bought water rights to the land behind his home decades ago, and Alva gets water from about 10 miles west of his house.
A well in Cleo Springs that his parents once used to water their yard has gone dry, which Dietz attributes to the rise in irrigation.
Dietz said he is worried about what further groundwater depletion could mean for people who depend on the aquifers.
“We're just really concerned about the drinking water,” Dietz said. “I mean, the Water Resources Board, I know they've got their hands tied because the legislators have to make the rules for them, and until the legislators set the rules and the Water Resources Board implements them rules, we're going to run out of water.”
The Oklahoma Legislature recently gave OWRB the ability to more strictly enforce permit holders’ water usage reports, and gave it the ability to enact punishments for failing to report usage through Senate Bill 259, also known as the Groundwater Modernization Act.
Lawmakers have for years struggled over whether to require metering for irrigation and previously failed to pass similar legislation, such as House Bill 1807 and House Bill 3194. Still, because self-reported water use can be unreliable, SB 259 requires permit-holding commercial wells to use a metering or alternate measuring system to track water use, though there will be an eight-year period before this is enforced.
The bill took effect Nov. 1.
According to Neel, statistics will help determine the success of the bill. OWRB has been reviewing existing permits, but it does not know who about one-third of the permits belong to. That means they don’t know where to send the annual water use reports.
OWRB has also been looking at the water use reports for 2025, and is looking at issuing notices of violation for the several hundred permit holders who did not report water use. Neel said this is the first time in history OWRB is taking this step.
Oklahoma is working to manage and understand how much water is available and how much is being used, but the question remains as to what further depletion could mean for the people who depend on this water.
Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For more stories by Gaylord News go to Gaylord News.net.
