Fred Creek Improvements Coming To ORU Campus

A major flood control project starts next month on Fred Creek in south Tulsa. It's a job a long time in the making. <br/><br/>News on 6 reporter Emory Bryan says Fred Creek has been a continuing

Wednesday, January 3rd 2007, 11:16 am

By: News On 6

A major flood control project starts next month on Fred Creek in south Tulsa. It's a job a long time in the making.

News on 6 reporter Emory Bryan says Fred Creek has been a continuing problem for south Tulsa and especially the campus of Oral Roberts University.

It has occasionally flooded parts of the campus and often has to be repaired because the water washes away the creek bank.

ORU's David Ellsworth has been dealing with the problem of Fred Creek for years. It meanders through the ORU campus and on a normal day it's barely more than a trickle. But the creek has been a big problem for years.

In 2000, after a night of heavy rain, it flooded parts of south Tulsa, causing millions of dollars in damage to homes. On the ORU campus, on the morning of graduation, 4 feet of water flooded into a classroom building. David Ellsworth: "The basement flooded of that building. We incurred about $5 million dollars worth of damage." The problem is that the Fred Creek channel isn't big enough to handle flash flooding.

The bridges and utility lines that cross the creek are slowly being undermined. Now the city plans to spend $15-million to rework the Creek and stop the flood damage at ORU. The work on Fred Creek will start on the east end of the campus. There's almost a mile of creek through the university and this project will take two years.

The university has spent millions on what's amounted to patchwork fixes, but it's taken the muscle of government to come up with a permanent solution. The channel will be widened and moved in places and the banks will be landscaped to hold the dirt in place. It should eliminate the flooding and prevent damage from heavy rain.

For ORU, it should be a good looking solution to what's been a constant problem. "We're looking forward to it looking like a natural place to be instead of a big moat as we call it around the university."

The planning is all done and now the university is moving some utility lines to get ready for the construction. It's going to start on the upstream side. That's unusual for a project like this and they're doing it so it won't interfere with the parking and traffic for the PGA Championship this summer.