Some Okmulgee County Residents Face 4th Day Without Running Water

*Update*

Okmulgee Co. Rural Water District 2 said that they cannot provide a definite timeline for when water distribution will return to normal due to "various unknown" factors.

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People living in Okmulgee County’s second rural water district are going on their fourth day of little to no running water. Employees are working to restore water to those customers, but say it is a slow process because they cannot pinpoint the exact problem.

The rural water district covers most of the Preston area in Okmulgee County. Residents affected by the outage express frustration over having no water to drink, brush their teeth with, or flush toilets.

The midweek service of Preston First Baptist Church is canceled because of the water outage, but a member of the congregation is still on site. Ernie Sharp, a deacon in the church, is helping distribute cans of water that were donated to assist people dealing with dry faucets. Sharp’s house is also included in the outage.

“Main thing, I guess, is trying to find something to flush the toilets with,” said Sharp.

Jim Waller, another customer of the rural water district, is making frequent trips to fill up buckets of water from massive canteens provided by the county’s emergency management office. Waller’s water has been out for days.

“People who don’t have good air conditioning and don’t have good shade trees and stuff like that, it makes it real hard,” said Waller.

Crews are working to find the root of the problem inside the pump house. The City of Okmulgee’s water supply feeds into seven districts, including Rural Water District 2.

“We’ve spent the day opening hydrants, checking pressures, trying to figure out what’s going on,” said Bryan Dudley, plant operations director for the City of Okmulgee. “We’ve been messing with regulator valves. All kinds of stuff.”

Dudley says water is slowly starting to flow to the district, but crews do not have a definite timetable for when everything will be back to normal. Customers like Waller are trying to make the best of a dry situation.

“There are a few rough spots in life and this is just one of them,” said Waller. “It won’t be that bad. We’ll make it through it. Always have.”

The City of Okmulgee is asking residents to conserve water however they can until the rural water district is up and running again. Splash pads in town have temporarily been closed to help with those conservation efforts.