Pre-Development Engineering Loan Advances Red Oak, Oklahoma Water Plant

In Red Oak, Oklahoma, Latimer County Rural Water District No. 4 is preparing to replace the water treatment plant that has served its customers since 1989.

USDA Native American Set-Aside grant funding will pay for the new plant. A Pre-Development Engineering (PDE) loan from Communities Unlimited (CU) is covering the engineering work the district must complete before the project can go out to bid.

Decades of Plant Experience

Frank Allen, District Manager of Latimer 4, came to rural water from industry. He spent years with Texas Instruments traveling the world to start up and shut down plants and helped build several facilities. When he looks at his district’s water treatment plant, he sees what decades of operation have done to its equipment.

“We no longer have steel tanks,” Allen said. “We have iron oxide tank walls. It’s eaten away the tank walls and the supporting structures.”

The deterioration has become so severe that pressing on the plant’s two treatment tanks can leave a dent, Allen said, and water continuously leaks onto the floor.

Part of the problem comes with treating raw surface water. The chemicals used in the process are oxidizing or corrosive, and chlorine is stored in the same room where the water is produced.

“It’s chemistry taking its toll on the hardware that we try to run,” Allen said. “It eats the motors up. It eats the pumps up.”

The manufacturer expected plants like this one to last no more than about 25 years. The USDA loan that originally financed the plant ran for almost 40 years. The district crew has kept it operating well beyond that expected lifespan.

“We have part of our tanks held together with J-B Weld from the inside to keep them from leaking,” Allen said.

Duct tape has also become part of the district’s temporary repairs as staff work to keep aging equipment operating until the replacement plant is built.

Planning for the Worst While Building for the Future

Allen has also considered what would happen if the plant stopped operating before its replacement is complete.

He learned that bringing in emergency water treatment equipment through state and military channels could take three to six months. As a backup, the district applied to the Oklahoma Water Resources Board (OWRB) for a grant to connect to two local wells, each capable of producing 60 gallons per minute. The application has been accepted and is awaiting approval.

The long-term answer, however, is a new treatment plant.

The replacement project will include new pumps, a clarifier, a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, a clearwell, backwash ponds, a generator, an office building, water lines and valves.

The Gap Between the Grant and the Ground

Funding for the new plant has been approved through USDA. But before construction can go out to bid, the district must complete its engineering plans and receive approval from the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ).

The district has to pay those engineering costs up front before being reimbursed.

For a small rural water system, that creates another hurdle between receiving funding and beginning construction.

Allen has raised the issue with engineers, state agencies and industry groups. Asking a small district with limited cash on hand to front engineering costs before it can access its grant funding can delay urgently needed projects, Allen said.

“I need the plant now,” he added.

The district considered other options. People in the community offered to lend the money themselves, but those loans would have carried higher interest rates and cost the district more.

Latimer 4 connected with CU’s Lending Team, where Senior Economic Development Loan Officer Chris Ranniger worked with the district on a PDE loan to cover the engineering phase, part of Communities Unlimited’s lending alongside rural water systems facing the same funding gap.

What the New Plant Will Change

Today, much of the treatment process is manual. Every night between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., staff come to the plant to backwash the filters by hand.

Allen expects the new plant to be roughly 80 to 90% automated, including automatic filter backwashing.

The plant will also be able to continue operating during power outages. Currently, when electricity goes out, the district stops producing water and relies on what is stored in its water tower until power returns. The replacement plant will include a generator serving both the raw water intake and treatment plant.

Allen expects the project to improve water quality and reliability while reducing operating costs, particularly labor expenses.

Once ODEQ releases the engineering plans, Latimer 4 can take the project to bid and move one step closer to replacing a plant its staff has kept running for more than three decades.