Sardis Lake (Oklahoma)

DescriptionEdit

The lake covers 14,360 acres (58 km²) with 117 miles (188 km) of shoreline. The lake is an impoundment of Jackfork Creek, a tributary of the Kiamichi River. The lake is also 45 miles (72 km) east of McAlester, Oklahoma. It drains an area of 275 square miles (710 km²).

The lake's normal pool elevation is 599 feet (183 m) above sea level. Its storage capacity is 274,330 acre feet (338,380,000 m³). At flood stage its elevation is 607 feet (185 m) above sea level and its capacity rises to 396,900 acre feet (489,600,000 m³).

HistoryEdit

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, led by Donald Mahaffey, constructed the dam and lake between 1977 and 1982 under a contract with the state of Oklahoma for the purpose of selling water to municipalities and industrial customers in Oklahoma. Oklahoma agreed to make 50 annual payments and to pay the costs of operating the dam and lake. However, the state was unable to sell the water it needed to recover its costs, so the state discontinued payments to the federal government in 1997. The federal government sued the state for breach of contract and recovery of funds. The case wound its way through the courts and eventually Oklahoma lost the case when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Thus, the Corps of Engineers legally owns Sardis Lake.

Proposed transfer of waterEdit

Shortly after Sardis Lake was filled, various plans were presented to the Oklahoma Water Resources Board (OWRB) for moving water from Sardis Lake to the vicinity of Oklahoma City. One of the first plans, presented in 1992, contemplated selling about 93 percent of the water to the North Texas Municipal Water District. Following heated protests, the state legislature rejected the ORWB plan.

A second attempt to sell the lake's water in Texas (this time to a different water district) occurred in the following year. This would have included having the legislature impose a seven-year moratorium on further out of state water sales. This plan also failed to pass in the legislature.

Debt to Corps of EngineersEdit

A news article in June, 2010, reported that the State of Oklahoma had paid $27 million to the Corps of Engineers to settle the debt.

Chickasaw v. FallinEdit

Oklahoma City is endeavoring to purchase the lion's share of water from Sardis Lake. A state contract executed in 2011, reserved 136,000 acre-feet of water for the Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust. (OUT)

Several Native American tribes had filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in 2011, seeking an injunction that would prevent the state and Oklahoma City from transporting water from Sardis Lake to Oklahoma City. In particular, the tribes state that they had been excluded from negotiations between the OWRB and the OUT. The Choctaws, for example, claim that the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek gave them authority over water resources in their territory. State officials claim that treaties signed by the tribes after the Civil War relinquished tribal rights, and therefore they can no longer make such claims.

An article published in the Tulsa Law Review describes the potential legal ramifications for this case:

"If the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations successfully obtain either full or substantial rights to the waters in Sardis Reservoir, other federally-recognized trbes that have water rights not yet formally recognized may have the footing needed to seek legal protection of those rights. If Oklahoma wins this case... tribal water rights could be severely impaired and the future social and economic wealth of all the tribes in the state could be jeopardized, beginning with the Choctaw and Chickasaw."