Water rights

[Chuck Bao]

Does anyone get these? Does it matter if you don’t? Nobody (including the state) can sell these out from under you, can they?

My family is really spooked by wild internet stories about Boone Pickens and his Mesa Water and their whole idea of selling water to the SA and DFW areas.

Internet searches and I was totally bogged down in the whole ground water versus surface water debate. I mean, really?

If your neighbor is drawing down the water table and you can’t prove it, does it matter? That is besides your 100-year old water wells (one in particular that was a Madill to Ardmore watering hole for horses.) Your natural spring went dry and your other neighbors’ artesian wells went dry.

I know I started a thread like this before. I just can’t find it. Help me out you legal and internet people. What is your opinion.

I’ve decided to file for water rights on all of my properties, despite the fact that I ain’t really going to use the water. I don’t want anyone else to profit from it either, really.

[bluedogok]

I still think the main purpose behind Boone's "Green Energy" push (othat than making money from his gas and wind energy investments) is to try and provide a diversion from his plan to steal water rights and become the water company for North Texas.

[StoopTroup]

What's worse?

A Land Thief or a guy who'd steal a Land Thief's water and sell it to a Texan?

[olevetonahill]

I think theres More Money In water rights for the FEW than there Is in OIL
Just sayin

[Penguin]

So instead of a Land Rush, there will soon be a Water Rush?

[olevetonahill]

So instead of a Land Rush, there will soon be a Water Rush?

NO bro it will Be Russian water, Try to keep up with the Politics part of the Board ok ?

[mdklatt]

I still think the main purpose behind Boone's "Green Energy" push (othat than making money from his gas and wind energy investments) is to try and provide a diversion from his plan to steal water rights and become the water company for North Texas.

The right-of-way for the transmission lines he wants to build could be used as right-of-way for water pipelines as well--and secured via eminent domain.

[Fraggle145]

I will comment on this later, but it will be a long one and I aint got the time right now...

[Chuck Bao]

Fraggle, if you want water samples on ponds, I told my bro you'd call him.

[OU-HSV]

water we talking bout in this thread???

[Chuck Bao]

Fraggle works at OU biological station on Lake Texoma and was doing research on golden algea blooms. I think the key thing was trying to determine if the algea is spread by boat or water fowl. My family has like 30-40 cattle ponds near Lake Texoma and it would benefit us to know the answer.

[bonkuba]

I always enjoy driving through West Texas seeing those frickin' windmills......my 4-year old asks me......"What are they for???"......me.....trying to keep from laughing.....they are just really cool things to look at huh? :D

Maybe some electwiciteeeeee but for the love of God.......those things suck. And yes.....so does Boone:D :D Hell, I would rather have a pump-jack in my backyard than one of those ***-ugly things.....oh wait a minute....I do have a pump jack in my back yard......making me money........damn.:rolleyes:

[bonkuba]

NO bro it will Be Russian water, Try to keep up with the Politics part of the Board ok ?

spek:D :D

[Chuck Bao]

Oh, the other issue is that a neighbor is drawing on the water table and there is nothing we can do about it. He is buying more land on the otherside of the property and legally pumping more water out from nearby wells.

[bonkuba]

Now that the kiddies have gone to bed.....

That just really pisses me off how ****ers will do that. You might tell him that it should be OK to put your *****edit***** schlong in his wife from an adjacent bed.....after all it is beside his property not on it.......oh wait;)

You should put like some toxic crap in somehow and kill all his ****.:D


OK...OK....I feel better now.

:pop:

[Flagstaffsooner]

California steals all of our water.

[Okla-homey]

Oh, the other issue is that a neighbor is drawing on the water table and there is nothing we can do about it. He is buying more land on the otherside of the property and legally pumping more water out from nearby wells.

short answer: Here in Okrahoma, as long he is making reasonable use of it (irrigation, watering stock, drinking, etc.), and not wasting it, he can generally do that. The only other thing is domestic use usually trumps strictly commercial uses. Thus, if he's pumping it out to operate his car wash, and the other folks can no longer draw enough to drink or flush their toilets, they might prevail in an action to enjoin his excessive use strictly for commercial purposes.

Bottom line: There must be a real estate lawyer in their neck of the woods they can consult. They could band together and that guy could represent all of them versus the water sucker d00d.

[Fraggle145]

Fraggle works at OU biological station on Lake Texoma and was doing research on golden algea blooms. I think the key thing was trying to determine if the algea is spread by boat or water fowl. My family has like 30-40 cattle ponds near Lake Texoma and it would benefit us to know the answer.

Basically what I am trying to do is get a sample from a lot of lakes in the Red River drainage and then screen them genetically to see if golden algae is present. I also look at the bacterial, phytoplankton and zooplankton communities as well as the nutrient loads, etc... and try to get a snapshot of what was going on when I took the sample. After I finally get all of the data I am going to put into a big analysis and see if I can determine any patterns of where and why golden algae is distributed where it is. so I wont necessarily know how it got there, but it may be easy to make some hypotheses which could then be tested about distance between ponds etc...

Anyway thanks Chuck I will get in touch with you closer to winter time and see if I can work out a time to come by and get some samples.

[OUHOMER]

I always enjoy driving through West Texas seeing those frickin' windmills......my 4-year old asks me......"What are they for???"......me.....trying to keep from laughing.....they are just really cool things to look at huh? :D

Maybe some electwiciteeeeee but for the love of God.......those things suck. And yes.....so does Boone:D :D Hell, I would rather have a pump-jack in my backyard than one of those ***-ugly things.....oh wait a minute....I do have a pump jack in my back yard......making me money........damn.:rolleyes:

I been looking for a windmill to pump water, I have 2 wells on my place and would like the one to water the lawn and garden. I hate kicking in the water pump, dont like to spend the electricity or wear out the pump. But they aint cheap

[Fraggle145]

short answer: Here in Okrahoma, as long he is making reasonable use of it (irrigation, watering stock, drinking, etc.), and not wasting it, he can generally do that. The only other thing is domestic use usually trumps strictly commercial uses. Thus, if he's pumping it out to operate his car wash, and the other folks can no longer draw enough to drink or flush their toilets, they might prevail in an action to enjoin his excessive use strictly for commercial purposes.

Bottom line: There must be a real estate lawyer in their neck of the woods they can consult. They could band together and that guy could represent all of them versus the water sucker d00d.

Chuck, Homey nailed it here. This is the way it is and for right now there isnt much you can do about it. Unless you can prove he is wasting it, which would be really difficult.

I would say get all of the water rights you can becaue that is going to be the next big thing... we can live without oil, we cant live without water. The OWRB is currently in the process of putting together the new 50 year water plan. It will be interesting to see what sort of granfather clauses they put in it, becuase i dont think they are going to be able to shift all of the old ways of using water over night. More people are coming which means more wells in the ground, there are places where the amount of wells has increased 1000 fold in the last 50 years. I hope the OWRB realize some of the dangers such as the one Chuck has mentioned about the current plan. I went to the Governor's Water Conference this year and they seem to be trying to figure it all out... it is just such a big complicated mess with people on all sides pulling on the same resource.

One of the really big problems is that people think that if the water moves on down the river we are wasting it, which just isnt the case as people downstream need water and aquifers need to be replenished. There are many places where rivers run underground now because of the depletion of the aquifer. Whoever said California steals all of our water has a really good point, but then again we "steal" all of Texas and Arkansas water. In is a lot of those western states they have ruined or exploited the water resources available to the point of ruining some of the ecosystems, a perfect example is the Colorado River with excessive damming. In a lot of instances they lose more water due to evaporation from the surface of the reservoirs then they would by letting the river be a free flowing system.

So anyway Texas and Oklahoma fight about water a lot because they say we are holding it back and we say that its ours. Hence all the stuff with Boone Pickens and Sardis Lake and all of that. Now they are also talking about water transport form the East to the West side of the state, which imho is just a bad idea. Not only does it allow a pathway for invasive species and the chance for ruining ecosystems that way, it also doesnt make sense to me to try to grow Cotton a water hungry plant in the plains where there isnt much rain.

So basically Chuck at this point the best thing you can do is get the water rights. Here are some helpful links:

OWRB rules mainpage
http://www.owrb.ok.gov/util/rules/rules.php

OWRB rules for taking and use of groundwater
http://www.owrb.ok.gov/util/rules/pdf_rul/2008_adopted/Chap30_2008.pdf

[Chuck Bao]

Basically what I am trying to do is get a sample from a lot of lakes in the Red River drainage and then screen them genetically to see if golden algae is present. I also look at the bacterial, phytoplankton and zooplankton communities as well as the nutrient loads, etc... and try to get a snapshot of what was going on when I took the sample. After I finally get all of the data I am going to put into a big analysis and see if I can determine any patterns of where and why golden algae is distributed where it is. so I wont necessarily know how it got there, but it may be easy to make some hypotheses which could then be tested about distance between ponds etc...

Anyway thanks Chuck I will get in touch with you closer to winter time and see if I can work out a time to come by and get some samples.

Well yeah, thanks for explaining it properly, Fraggle.

When I told my brother, he immediately said that it would be a very good thing to know. PM me when you are ready to collect samples and I'll give you his phone number.

I hope other land owners in the Red River drainage system support your research.

I know a lot of farmers in the Marshall Co. area. So, if you need more samples, I can call them for you.

[Chuck Bao]

Chuck, Homey nailed it here. This is the way it is and for right now there isnt much you can do about it. Unless you can prove he is wasting it, which would be really difficult.

I would say get all of the water rights you can becaue that is going to be the next big thing... we can live without oil, we cant live without water. The OWRB is currently in the process of putting together the new 50 year water plan. It will be interesting to see what sort of granfather clauses they put in it, becuase i dont think they are going to be able to shift all of the old ways of using water over night. More people are coming which means more wells in the ground, there are places where the amount of wells has increased 1000 fold in the last 50 years. I hope the OWRB realize some of the dangers such as the one Chuck has mentioned about the current plan. I went to the Governor's Water Conference this year and they seem to be trying to figure it all out... it is just such a big complicated mess with people on all sides pulling on the same resource.

One of the really big problems is that people think that if the water moves on down the river we are wasting it, which just isnt the case as people downstream need water and aquifers need to be replenished. There are many places where rivers run underground now because of the depletion of the aquifer. Whoever said California steals all of our water has a really good point, but then again we "steal" all of Texas and Arkansas water. In is a lot of those western states they have ruined or exploited the water resources available to the point of ruining some of the ecosystems, a perfect example is the Colorado River with excessive damming. In a lot of instances they lose more water due to evaporation from the surface of the reservoirs then they would by letting the river be a free flowing system.

So anyway Texas and Oklahoma fight about water a lot because they say we are holding it back and we say that its ours. Hence all the stuff with Boone Pickens and Sardis Lake and all of that. Now they are also talking about water transport form the East to the West side of the state, which imho is just a bad idea. Not only does it allow a pathway for invasive species and the chance for ruining ecosystems that way, it also doesnt make sense to me to try to grow Cotton a water hungry plant in the plains where there isnt much rain.

So basically Chuck at this point the best thing you can do is get the water rights. Here are some helpful links:

OWRB rules mainpage
http://www.owrb.ok.gov/util/rules/rules.php

OWRB rules for taking and use of groundwater
http://www.owrb.ok.gov/util/rules/pdf_rul/2008_adopted/Chap30_2008.pdf

Thanks Homey and Fraggle.

There are lawyers in Oklahoma that specialize in this area and our lawyer who does was saying that there is nothing we can do about the neighbor.

He does advise, however, that we get water rights for all of our properties. We got water rights on 3-4 of our pastures two years ago (during that ’06 draught summer season) and had to start commercial wells to water our livestock. We will start the process of getting commercial water well permits on the other pastures.

Thanks for the links, Fraggle. My googling didn’t produce anything current or nearly as useful.

Your comments about “it’s a legal mess”, “surface water versus ground water”, “Oklahoma versus Texas” and “transporting water from east to west”, well, frankly that scares me. I really don’t know if the vast majority of Oklahoma land owners / farmers / ranchers know and understand it.

[Fraggle145]

Your comments about “it’s a legal mess”, “surface water versus ground water”, “Oklahoma versus Texas” and “transporting water from east to west”, well, frankly that scares me. I really don’t know if the vast majority of Oklahoma land owners / farmers / ranchers know and understand it.

The scary part is that each side only understands the water rights from their own perspective, and what they want to use it for. Unfortunately it is hard to educate everybody on what everybody else might need water for and why we cant just keep it all etc.. It tends to come to the $$$ vs. the earth thing again. :(

[mdklatt]

It tends to come to the $$$ vs. the earth thing again. :(

If we have enough money we can just move to another planet when this one is used up.

[Okla-homey]

The scary part is that each side only understands the water rights from their own perspective, and what they want to use it for. Unfortunately it is hard to educate everybody on what everybody else might need water for and why we cant just keep it all etc.. It tends to come to the $$$ vs. the earth thing again. :(

I say scru the tejanos. They have several hundred miles of coastline. Let 'em invest in desalinization like the danged arabs. It works. And lets us Okies keep our fine clear fresh water. At least the amount the Arkies haven't tainted with their hawg and chicken poop.

[Fraggle145]

I say scru the tejanos. They have several hundred miles of coastline. Let 'em invest in desalinization like the danged arabs. It works. And lets us Okies keep our fine clear fresh water. At least the amount the Arkies haven't tainted with their hawg and chicken poop.

I agree. I see it as (texas) why dont you do this so we can have your (Oklahoma's) good stuff. I have a problem with us just saying well we need to keep it all, dam every river and screw everyone else. We've seen with Colorado and with our current groundwater rights situation that this doesnt work so well.

I also still have a real problem with where people decide to use water for a given purpose that makes no common sense. Like the cotton example in West OK... I mean wtf?! you have no water! instead grow something that doesnt have that severe water demand. It amazes me that people want to live where things dont grow,and then want to grow ****. I just dont get it.

[bluedogok]

It isn't just Oklahoma water that he is wanting to divert to DFW, he also has a scheme to build a pipeline from Wyoming/Montana to DFW, of course he also want to sell to cities on the trip to DFW as well. He is definitely an equal opportunity thief.....