Nature

The True Hydration Station

e Oklahoma Water Resources Board ensures the state’s residents have clean and safe water to drink.

Staff at the Oklahoma Water Resources Board work to collect physical, chemical and biological data to set Oklahoma’s water quality standards. Photos courtesy OWRB Of the hundreds of state agencies that exist to ensure the smooth management of Oklahoma, many of them are well known and operate quite publicly – such as the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety.

Next time you turn on the tap and fresh water pours out, however, you can thank one of the lesser-known state agencies, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board (OWRB), for its regulatory oversight of one our most precious resources.

“ e water board and water management are not really known by the general public,” says Julie Cunningham, the board’s executive director. “You know, you turn on your tap and you expect water to come out, but you don’t think about what it takes, where the water came from, the water rights that your community had to obtain to get that water.” e water board, which is involved in all of those processes and more, has a number of directives, but its main objectives include managing and improving Oklahoma’s water resources through water use appropriation and permitting, water quality monitoring and standards, providing nancial assistance for water/ wastewater systems, and dam safety, among others.

“ e water board is a very diverse agency with a really important mission,” says Cunningham. “Our agency is in a position to do the data collection, and the studies to engage with the public on these very important water issues. e challenges are good challenges, and our job is to have an understanding of those challenges and let people know. Let our lawmakers understand, let our citizens understand, and work toward resiliency.”

Within the agency, there are four divisions including administrative services, nancial assistance, planning and management, and the water quality programs. Bill Cauthron leads that last division, which collects physical, chemical and biological data to set Oklahoma’s water quality standards.

“Our division does a lot of di erent things,” says Cauthron. “We do the bene cial use monitoring program known as BUMP; we do stream-gauging, monitoring on groundwater wells, biological collections ... so that’s a taste of what we do on the monitoring. We also write the state’s water quality standards, which are used by a number of environmental agencies where we outline the expectations for water quality in our lakes, streams and groundwaters across the state.” ABOUT THE Despite ever changing weather DIRECTOR conditions, aging infrastructure and Julie Cunningham is native to Oklahoma, so the the nancial challenges faced by all state agencies, the challenges that the state OWRB is adaptfaces when it comes ing and working to water resources are to ensure that the not abstract or distant – state’s water can they’re happening in her continue to serve backyard. She worked Oklahomans for in all four parts of the centuries to come. organization before “We are cerascending to the top role. “I began at the water board as a temporary,” tainly going to face our challenges,” says Cunningham. “Water planning she says. “We were hired today and in the under the Clean Lakes future is going to Program, under Bill be di erent than Cauthron, to do scientific water planning studies on Oklahoma’s was in the past. lakes. I made $6 an hour, Our biggest chalbut it was my favorite job lenge is going to be I’ve ever had. I had never the infrastructure had a reason to travel to every corner of the state and we’ve just got some investment we need, but as far as the future, Oklahoma has a healthy beautiful resources. So water supply.” that hooked me.” LUKE REYNOLDS