In early July, one of the hottest stretches this summer, one of Guymon's city water wells clunked to a halt.
Not just any well — this was Well Number 21, the city's best well. The one that pumps a quarter of the water Guymon uses each day.
"That was 827 gallons a minute we was without for two weeks," said City Manager Mike Shannon said. "So yeah, we were kind of in dire need of more water, but we made it through."
The well is back up and running now, but that stretch highlights a problem in Guymon: the city doesn't have much wiggle room in its water supply. On July 9th, when their star well was out, city residents used nearly 95% of all the water they had access to.
Shannon sends out an email blast nearly every morning with Guymon's water use and well capacity. At the bottom, his email signature says "Trust the process" — a slogan coined for managing professional basketball teams, not municipal water supplies. But it works for those, too, according to Shannon.
The process has led Guymon to victory: a new water well field just east of town, amid some blustery mesas dotted with yucca and sagebrush. Hence its name: the Mesa Water Project.
The right spot for a well field
Along either side of the gravel roads leading to the site are private wells feeding center-pivot irrigation systems.
"I would just bet you right now — a cold Diet Pepsi, because that's what I like to drink," Shannon said as he drove. "That's probably a 2,000-gallon-a-minute water well."
That's a good well, especially in Oklahoma's Panhandle. Guymon lies over the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from West Texas all the way up to South Dakota. There's a lot of variability across that vast stretch.
"A lot of people think the Ogallala is just an ocean of water," Shannon said. "It's not."
The aquifer is more like pockets of gravel saturated with water, in between pockets of harder rock that don't hold much water at all. And some of the water-bearing areas are shallower than others. Plus, the water table in the Ogallala Aquifer is dropping — people across the Plains are pulling water from it, but it doesn't really soak up much new water at all.
Since Guymon developed its current major well field in the early 2000s, it's lost nearly a third of its daily production.
"We invested millions of dollars and now the water field is playing out," Shannon said. "That's what's scary."
But the hope is that a new well field a few miles away will provide reliable water for much longer. Guymon has leased the rights to 640 acres of water, plus around 14 acres of surface land for well houses, until 2080.
The land and the water are owned by the state and managed by the Commissioners of the Land Office. Alva Brockus is in charge of commercial leases there, which includes Guymon's.
"Guymon came to us probably almost three years ago now," Brockus said. "They needed water desperately."
Brockus said the leasing process took longer than usual because her office wanted to give Guymon space to perform studies and drill test wells. Data from those tests indicate there's plenty of water beneath the mesas.
"They have told us that they think they have a 75- or 100-year water supply for their city, which is just huge for them," Brockus said. "From our perspective, this is a win because we're getting market rates for the water and for the surface use, which is a requirement for us."
That's because it's state school land, which means it's set aside to fund public education across Oklahoma. Guymon's 55-year lease has what Brockus calls an "escalator" built in to account for inflation.
Because Guymon is leasing the water but not much land, the Commissioners of the Land Office also gets to keep leasing it for agricultural purposes, like keeping cows or growing crops.
"Our agricultural lessees and the City of Guymon will work kind of hand in hand as good neighbors with each other," Brockus said.
One of those agricultural lessees, who was already spending time out that patch of state school land, told Shannon how productive the aquifer was out there. That kicked off three years of discussions and test wells and fundraising.
After all that, Shannon had to drive down to Oklahoma City earlier this year and attend an auction for the lease. Even though the lease had been developed with Guymon in mind, another municipality or rural water district could have also bid on it.
Shannon said it was a white-knuckles experience, attending the auction. But ultimately, no other bidders showed up.
"I think Guymon, just because they were kind of the big people out there, were in the best probably position to be able to take on that financial component for it," Brockus said. "So yeah, it could have been some other people, but it was Guymon."
Questions and timelines
Most people around town seem excited about the new well field, but not everybody.
"See that property over there with the windmill?" Shannon said, pointing from the top of the mesa, near one of the test wells. "He's a good friend of mine, but he told me, 'Mike Shannon, you're not welcome on my property.'"
This neighbor and others are concerned that the city's wellfield will draw enough water from the aquifer that it will affect nearby private wells.
"The data we showed with this, they say we might affect the water table after 75 years," Shannon said. "I get it, I get his concern. So I provided him everything that I know, and I've not heard anything back from him."
Shannon has a deal with some city staff who were skeptical this would eventually pay off.
"I said, I'll tell you what I'll do, folks. I won't get a haircut, and I'll retire as soon as we get water out of the mesa," Shannon said. "I thought it was going to be quicker than what it was."
Shannon currently sports about a 4-inch ponytail. The Mesa Water Project is expected to deliver its first drops to the city in October of next year.
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