City Of Tulsa's Raw Water Supply Impacted By Flooding

The raw water supply for the City of Tulsa is in the area impacted by flooding and that has the city monitoring both rising levels in the reservoirs and dirtier water that needs more treatment.

The water coming out of Pensacola Dam is a gauge of how much rain fell in the area.

This is from Grand Lake, but Lake Spavinaw and Eucha are just south and they're running over as well.

It's an outpost 50 miles from the City of Tulsa, but Spavinaw Lake is where Tulsans get much of their water.

Floodwater topped the spillway at Spavinaw, pushed by heavy rain upstream around another city reservoir at Lake Eucha.

The overflow pushed Spavinaw Creek through a campground, caused some damage to buildings, overturned a van and washed underneath one end of the bridge on Highway 82. 

ODOT will keep the road closed even though the water level is dropping.

"They're dumping Lake Hudson the best they can," said Mike Dunham, Mayes Co Emergency Management. 

The tremendous amount of water flowing through the dams is causing some flooding, but the dams prevented it from being much worse.

The water from Spavinaw was uncontrolled, going over a spillway, but the city was controlling the flow upstream.

"At Eucha, we actually were able to open two gates, drop it two feet and we have it under control," said Roy Foster, City of Tulsa Water Supply Manager. 

Tulsa's water supply is overflowing at the moment, but the city said the flood won't impact the quality of the water that reaches the city.

The city said the water supply is dirtier than usual but they're able to filter that out of the drinkable water they send out.