4—Channel Markers
Sinking in sand and water
After Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans’ levee system in 2005, FEMA and the Corps raised safety standards for levees around the country. The Tulsa-West Tulsa Levee System became ineligible for federal insurance due to an ‘Unacceptable’ rating in December 2007. Under Levee Commissioner Todd Kilpatrick, the district regained conditional coverage in 2012 with a plan to study and improve the system. Since then, Kilpatrick said elected officials have put cosmetic river development first.
“We need to talk about public safety,” Kilpatrick said. “That should be the foundation of whatever you’re doing along that river.”
In 2013, city councilors and then-Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. convened the Arkansas River Infrastructure Task Force—a group of elected officials, city employees and businessmen1—to pursue implementation of the Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan, a midcentury development scheme legitimized in the early 2000s by the regional planning agency known as INCOG.2
The plan proposed eight3 new low-head dams on the 42 miles of river between Keystone Dam and the Wagoner County line. Over time, proposals for Zink Dam escalated from renovation to total replacement, and the focus on other dams narrowed to two: in south Tulsa at Jenks, and upstream of Zink Dam near the Sand Springs Petrochemical Complex Superfund site.4 The task force targeted four dams, with potential costs eventually estimated at $316 million (about $407 million in today’s money).5
“We need to talk about public safety,” Kilpatrick said. “That should be the foundation of whatever you’re doing along that river.”
In December 2013, Tulsa’s Stormwater Drainage and Hazard Mitigation Advisory Board urged the task force to adopt the 1986 flood (307,000 cubic feet per second) plus one foot for the city’s floodplain ordinance—a change made decades earlier in Jenks.6
The following month, former Public Works Director Charles Hardt told the task force that he failed to “properly address the Arkansas River and its flooding problems” during his career. Hardt, who is known in part for his flood mitigation work, cited “zero doubt” that raising the standard would save lives and reduce losses.
“I’m trying to make up for my past sins and the lack of doing due diligence,” Hardt said at the January 2014 meeting. “What we can do right now, is before the dams are built, and before the community has a lot more development, … we can act now and adopt as a regulatory standard that [1986] flood plus one foot.”
The presentation and discussion lasted 45 minutes, during which time then-Councilor G.T. Bynum, who led the meeting and the task force, asked questions alongside other officials. Councilor Phil Lakin asked how raising the standard would affect owners of homes built to the existing ordinance.
“People are allowed to build in areas that are gonna flood again.”
—Ann Patton, writer and hazard mitigation advocate
“Okay so what do we—what do we do with all of the developments?” Lakin asked. “And how are the homeowners in the developments affected that have gone in while we’ve used a lower standard?”
Hardt suggested that individual neighborhoods work with the city to “try to minimize—stop the backing up of water from the river into their subdivision … or elevate—have a plan for—to take action.”
Hardt specifically mentioned the subdivisions near the south end of Riverside Drive (East 121st Street South and South Delaware Avenue)—one of which came up by name twice during the meeting.
“The Wind River [Crossing] development,” former Jenks mayor Vic Vreeland said. “Um—they’ll get water if we have another flood like ’86.”
“Yeah,” Lakin said. “Okay.”
Gaylon Pinc,7 who oversaw the creation of the Arkansas River Corridor plan at INCOG before exiting to work for the project manager overseeing the dams, underscored what he called “the equity issue.”
“Because at Wind River, if they can’t flood-proof that subdivision, you will have houses that are existing houses according to the [current] regulatory floodplain … that will sit next to potentially houses that are three or four feet higher than those. And that’s gonna be pretty obvious that there’s a reason for that.”
Lakin looked up from his tablet and turned toward Pinc.
“And that needs to be carefully thought out as well,” Pinc said. “How you deal with those subdivisions.”
At the same meeting, Kilpatrick presented a map depicting Tulsa’s Arkansas River floodplain under 350,000 cubic feet per second, with present-day levee conditions (effectively, “No Levees,” per the map’s title). Blue covered the leveed areas.
“We gotta have a healthy levee system to go along with the development,” Kilpatrick said.
Kilpatrick added that restoring the levees to their design standard would involve “a long, arduous, probably 10- to 15-year investment.”
“You’re actually gonna have to rebuild the thing,” Kilpatrick said. “It’s almost like replacement instead of rehab.”
The task force later earmarked funds for the levees8 but moved ahead with river development. The City of Tulsa continues to regulate the floodplain using 205,000 cubic feet per second—an outdated estimate for the 100-year flood—plus one foot.9
Hardt cited “zero doubt” that raising the standard would save lives.
In April 2023, Bynum said he does not remember Hardt or others advising the city to raise Tulsa’s floodplain standard to 1986 plus one foot. When asked why the city has not raised the standard given the increasing intensity of severe weather events, Bynum said the Stormwater Drainage and Hazard Mitigation Advisory Board “hasn’t made any such recommendation to me, or to the Public Works team, that I’m aware of.”
“I’m not aware of us ever doing anything other than following the recommendations that they make,” Bynum said. “There was no recommendation made. At least in the time that I’ve been mayor.”10
I reminded Bynum that he headed the task force meeting where Hardt made the recommendation.
“Okay, but we were focusing on the river project,” Bynum said.
Ann Patton, a former vice chair of the Stormwater Drainage and Hazard Mitigation Advisory Board, said “it was a mistake not to adopt those maps,” referring to 1986 plus one foot.
“People are allowed to build in areas that are gonna flood again,” Patton said.11
Tulsa’s Arkansas River flood probabilities and the likelihood of increasingly extreme storms suggest that raising the standard to 1986 plus one foot would not be enough to prevent catastrophic losses due to future flooding. Keystone Dam was designed to pass up to 989,000 cubic feet per second, more than three times the largest release in 1986, without overtopping.12
Bill Smith, a civil engineer and certified floodplain manager who has been involved with Arkansas River projects for decades, said 1986 plus one foot was an inadequate standard from the start.
In a phone interview, Smith described a call with Jenks’ floodplain administrator after the 1986 flood, when Jenks adopted the standard.
“I said, ‘Do you all realize that the ‘86 flood, at [307,000 cubic feet per second]—that Keystone Dam can release 990,000 cfs?’” Smith said.
“And, there was a pause. And I think they acknowledged, Yes, I think we know that. And I said, ‘So why are you setting a standard that is one third of the capacity that Keystone can release?’
"Well, that’s the highest it’s ever been, so that’s what we’re gonna use. …
“And I thought, you’re just putting people at risk. Just because we haven’t had a 600,000 [cubic feet per second] release, or a 990,000 [cubic feet per second] release, doesn’t mean that we can’t. … At some point in time, we’re gonna have those kind of flows.”
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A list of task force members is on p. 4 of this document.
INCOG stands for Indian Nations Council of Governments. However, Gaylon Pinc, who worked at INCOG for more than 30 years and oversaw the creation of the Arkansas River Corridor plan, said the agency “had nothing to do with [Indigenous people]” when it formed in 1967.
“Only until much later did INCOG approach the [Indigenous] tribes into becoming members,” Pinc said. “Indian Nations is only because we are in the geographical area of the [Indigenous] nations. That’s the only connection.”
See PDF p. 62 of the Phase II Master Plan.
See PDF p. 10 of this document and p. 8-12 of this one. I will describe Sand Springs Petrochemical Complex in greater detail in a future article.
The $316 million estimate appears on PDF p. 44 of this document.
Located west of the river in southern Tulsa County, Jenks raised its building standard after the 1986 flood to one foot above the event for projects in the Arkansas River floodplain outside the Jenks levee. In 2005, the Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan recommended that other local communities do the same (See p. 160 of this section). However, the plan more prominently promoted development in areas that flooded in 1986.
In 2013, Tulsa’s Stormwater Drainage and Hazard Mitigation Advisory Board cautioned that the city and county “are considering implementing part of the [Arkansas River Corridor] plan in relation to low-water dams but have not implemented the part of the corridor plan that contains floodplain management safeguards.”
“Those safeguards are intended to be the foundation for any actions to implement construction portions of the corridor plan,” the board wrote.
After city and county entities adopted the Arkansas River Corridor plan, Pinc left INCOG in 2006 to run the river projects for PMG. (Program Management Group does not capitalize the G in its initialism, PMg.) Through PMG Native, Pinc also managed the River Spirit Casino Resort development, which has conceptual ties to the proposed Jenks dam. Portions of my interview with Pinc will appear in future articles.
Based on preliminary repair estimates at the time, Kilpatrick requested $10 million in combined funding for the levees from the city and county. Here are details on the subsequent proposal that included the $10 million. Tulsa also allocated $3.4 million in Improve Our Tulsa funds. These funds will go toward Tulsa’s share in the eventual repayment for the levee repairs.
For essential information about Tulsa’s levees, read “The Known Unknowns.”
The so-called 100-year flood estimate signifies a 1% chance that a flood of an estimated magnitude will occur in any year. The Corps’ latest 100-year Arkansas River flood estimate for Tulsa is 270,000 cubic feet per second.
Recall that 1986 produced 307,000 cubic feet per second. Flood estimates mask an important range of uncertainty. For details about Tulsa’s Arkansas River flood probabilities, check out “Wall of Water” and “The Pool of Record,” the sixth and seventh articles in this series.
Here is the recommendation, from Bynum’s time on City Council.
In a 2019 opinion column, Ann Patton advised the city to “be honest about the size of the floodplain.”
“How many floods will it take to debunk the myth of the 100-year floodplain?” Patton wrote.
Keystone Dam was originally designed to pass up to 939,000 cubic feet per second without overtopping. Driven by increased flood estimates, the Corps revised this figure (called peak discharge) to 989,000 cubic feet per second in the early 1980s.
The Corps now projects that the Probable Maximum Flood—a worst-case scenario based on a convergence of extreme conditions “reasonably possible” in the region—would overtop Keystone Dam if it occurs.
For details about the Probable Maximum Flood and the status of Keystone Dam, read “Wall of Water.”