Let us be thankful for the fools…

A tragic chapter in the history of southeast Oklahoma is presently being written.
It involves the taking of the waters of Sardis Reservoir without any significant benefit being realized by the region.
The benefit will be given to Oklahoma City and its suburbs, which already enjoy the state’s best jobs and highest income levels.
The city’s desire to acquire the waters of Sardis is not without opposition from a group of citizens primarily in Pushmataha county. We fear that they don’t have the political clout to derail the metro’s desire for the water.
Whether or not the lake will become like Atoka, and have a yo-yo lake level, frequently drained to serve the needs of the metro—is yet to be determined.
The pursuers of the lake’s waters promise that they will abide by a minimum lake level agreement, but mysteriously, that agreement hasn’t been stipulated.
It may be that the last bastion of hope for the residents around Sardis Lake and in Southeast Oklahoma, is the Choctaw Nation, which has both the financial resources and the threatened loss of Tribal assets at stake.
There is well more than enough water in the Kiamichi to provide for the needs for Oklahoma City and central Oklahoma without Sardis Lake becoming a casualty to their needs.
Herein lies the problem—greed and leadership.
The city has the greed and absolutely no reluctance to take a regional asset, and the state is absent the leadership to affect meaningful and commonsensical change.
It would surprise us if Governor Henry would show some backbone and demand practical options that would provide for the metro’s future water needs, without long term damage and insult to our beautiful part of Oklahoma.
I would bet that the architects of the Oklahoma City water grab are quoting Mark Twain: “Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them, the rest of us could not succeed.”