The city of Seminole is receiving a $20,399,000 loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to replace the city's aging wastewater treatment plant.
Currently, Seminole is having a difficult time meeting minimum standards as required by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and the leaking structure is posing a health hazard. USDA Rural Development State Director Kenneth Corn said the city's system is past its designed lifespan.
"Theirs still has portions of it that were done during the WPA, so it’s reaching a period of almost 100 years," said Corn. "And then the cost of running one of those older systems is just too high, and so this will give them the ability to lower their cost with less maintenance issues."
The project will be financed through the USDA’s Water And Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program, a valuable resource for small towns.
"Most of these communities just do not have the revenue that would support replacement of an entire system. So, this is a program that allows them to update their water systems," Corn said.
Water infrastructure, especially in smaller rural communities, is becoming outdated, and cities are using parts that aren’t readily available anymore. Shellie Chard, DEQ’s Water Quality Division director told The Center Square, Oklahoma has pipes anywhere between 50-100 years old in many parts of the state. She said the typical lifespan of pipes is about 50 years.
In addition to his role as Rural Development State Director for the USDA, Corn is also the City Manager of Anadarko. In the past, he has encountered issues with his city’s old water infrastructure. Last year, the whole community was left dry after a water main break. Waiting to find the correct part to fix the problem delayed the city in getting the water fully restored to residents.
Thinking back to last year, Corn said an issue that he and other small communities are having is not knowing what's under the ground. He says rural towns are making assumptions based on what was put on a map—if they even have one at all.
"A lot of the staffing on those [water] systems has changed over the years and nobody wrote anything down. A lot of times when you are opening the ground to try to fix a problem with a water system, no one's on the staff that was there when it was put in, so you find all sorts of issues that you were not expecting that doesn't necessarily meet today's standards," said Corn. "It makes it very difficult to try to put those things back together where they operate and meet today's compliance issues."
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