** The Local Projects and Programs Survey is back open! Your projects will be added to your Senator/Representative’s District project list! Please complete the survey (or email Matt Cogburn your capital improvement plan) to help us keep the OWRB Infrastructure Needs Dashboard up to date with Oklahoma’s latest water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure challenges.

* * OSU Extension – Shape the future of water related workshops and programs with OSU’s new survey!

** KOSU Waterline is a project that looks into how water impacts peoples’ lives. Take their survey or listen to water focused news stories on kosu.org/waterline.

** OWRB recently provided a Water Rights Administration Update. As a result of new legislation regarding water rights administration in Oklahoma, the OWRB is increasing our capacity to speed up water right application processes and legal proceedings, streamline water use reporting and data accuracy, increase field services, and address water use complaints and non-compliance. Review the full update here.

Lake Hefner Lighthouse, Oklahoma City

OWRB will host Round 5 of Regional Meetings in March and will discuss preliminary draft recommendations from the 2025 Update to the Oklahoma Comprehensive Water Plan. Make plans to join us and share your ideas. See meeting Agenda here:

• March 4, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. | SW – Cameron University, McMahon Centennial Complex – McAsland Ballroom A/B, 2800 W. Gore Blvd., Lawton, OK 73505 | West Central, Southwest, Beaver-Cache, and Lower Washita OCWP Planning Regions
• March 5, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. | NW – High Plains Technology Center, Seminar Center, 3921 34^th, Woodward, OK 73801 | Panhandle OCWP Planning Region
• March 25, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. | NE – OSU Tulsa, Conference Center – B.S. Roberts Room, 700 N. Greenwood Ave., Tulsa, OK 74106 | Middle Arkansas, Grand, Eufaula, and Lower Arkansas OCWP Planning Regions
• March 26, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. | SE – Kiamichi Technology Center, Conference Room, 13739 SE. 202^nd, Talihina, OK 74571 | Blue-Boggy and Southeast OCWP Planning Regions
• March 27, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. | Central – Robert R. Lester Training Center, Classroom A, 3600 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., Oklahoma City, OK 73111 | Upper Arkansas and Central OCWP Planning Regions

Oklahoma Source Water Collaborative

Oklahoma has several agencies and organizations (below) that have authorities related to protecting our water quality through best practices in our watersheds and around our water wells and intakes. It is far cheaper to prevent impurities in our water than to treat it! Not to mention, good stewardship is just the right thing to do! It makes for improved habitat and better quality of life for us all! They have all teamed up to form the Oklahoma Source Water Protection Collaborative (OSW) which for the past year or two has been regular workgroup that shares our various touch points and authorities related to SWP. As we've gotten to know one another we see and learn about the broader SWP picture and ways that we can coordinate and find synergies that will make the OSW greater than the sum of its parts!

Being a Collaborative can help us reach funding set aside for SWP in the 2018 Farm Bill. In other states with such collaboratives, these organizations teamed up with local interests in watersheds with an overwhelming water quality challenge and together tackled some issues too big for any one of us.

Over the last few months, the OSW has been working together to create a GIS based web map related to water quality and source water protection. The goal was to create a common location to house and view GIS data to help identify potential sources of contamination, illustrate on-going and historical SWP projects, and to prioritize and support SWP projects within the State of Oklahoma. The map includes layers from both state and national organizations. On the state level this includes OWRB, ODEQ, Oklahoma Conservation Commission, Oklahoma Corporation Commission, and ORWA datasets, and national data from EPA, USGS, NRCS, and others. Currently, we are internally reviewing the web map before rolling this out for public use soon. The landing page for the web app is included below.

Coming Soon: Priority Project SWP Areas in Oklahoma

The  NRCS Source Water Protection (SWP) website that will allow the public, and stakeholders to view NRCS SWP High Priority Areas Interested in learning more about source water protection? Check out additional resources available at the Source Water Collaborative website. Click to edit this placeholder text.

Funding Resources

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced the following funding opportunities. 

• WaterSMART for Small Scale Water Efficiency Projects – Eligible projects include canal lining/piping, municipal metering, irrigation flow measurement, SCADA, landscape irrigation measures, high-efficiency indoor appliances and fixtures, and commercial cooling systems. Maximum award amount of $100,000. Application period 4 deadline is July 8, 2025. This notice of funding opportunity announcement is available at grants.gov by searching for funding opportunity R24AS00059 or by clicking here.
• WaterSMART for Environmental Water Resources Projects – Funding is available for projects for water conservation and efficiency, water management and infrastructure improvements, river and watershed restoration, or nature-based solutions that provide significant ecological benefits to help increase the reliability of water resources. The current application period closes on March 11, 2025 at 5 pm. Click here to view the funding opportunity announcement or navigate to grants.govthen search for funding opportunity R24AS00299. Learn more about the Environmental Water Resource Projects by clicking here.
  
  
• OWRB Clean Water SRF Program (CWSRF) announced that Principal Forgiveness Program applications will be accepted from February 3 to March 14. Learn more by visiting OWRB’s website or attending the SFY26 CWSRF Loan Forgiveness Webinar on January 29.

Upcoming Activities

• OWRB and OFMA announced 2025 Floodplain Workshops for the Spring and Summer. Learn more and register for a Floodplain Management 101, Floodplain Management 202, or OFMA Special Topics in Floodplain Management course today! Spots are limited by visiting the OWRB website.
• OWRB Dam Safety Program is hosting an in-person training focused on levee and dam safety, covering 10 potential failure modes during floods on April 16, 2025 from 8:30 – 10:30 am. It will include case studies, flood-related real-world examples, and practical guidance on flood management techniques. Find out more about this and other upcoming activities by reviewing the January Dam Safety Quarterly.
• The Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) has a variety of online and in-person events available. Find out more by visiting the ASDSO training calendar

Team OCWP is truly excited about the upcoming Recommendations meetings! Rethinking how we approach water and water issues is really what the Oklahoma Water Plan is all about! 

All of the data, all of the conversations, all of the surveys, all of the challenges, all of the site visits, meeting new people, ultimately give us diverse pieces of the Oklahoma water story and inform us where the shortfalls are, what the funding needs are, and the coarse corrections that should be taken.

We hope you'll join us in March to hear the big picture takeaways, discuss them further and share with us how they might need to be tweaked for your region or for your water sector. If you can't make it in person, there's a virtual option that we hope you'll take advantage of; or you can just email me directly your ideas / issues. 

Also, we hope that once we refine these recommendations and submit them to the legislature, that you will stay involved and work with your local leaders to make those changes happen, get the funding, MAKE WATER MATTER so we can be a Top 10 State in clean abundant habitat-rich scenic water for Oklahoma! 

See you in March!

Owen Mills
Director of Water Planning
owen.mills@owrb.ok.gov