AUGUST 18 • ENID'S WATER STORY • PART 5 OF 8

The Road Not Taken

In 1948, Congress authorized 38,000 acre-feet of Canton Reservoir storage for Enid's municipal water supply. Enid never used it. In 1990, contemporaneous reporting says Enid commissioners approved selling the city's Canton storage interests to Oklahoma City for $750,000 — and officials said the cost of moving Canton water to Enid had been prohibitive.

Published Aug. 18, 2026 · Updated Aug. 21, 2026 · Part 5 of 8

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Part 4 followed Enid's groundwater system as it moved farther and farther beyond the city limits.

At the same time, another water source was taking shape southwest of Enid.

Canton Reservoir.

And this is where the story becomes very easy to oversimplify.

The federal record does not say Enid owned Canton Lake. It says Congress authorized storage in Canton Reservoir for Enid's municipal water supply.

What Congress actually authorized

Canton began as a federal flood-control project. Congress authorized the project in 1938, construction began in December 1940, and World War II temporarily interrupted the work. The Corps says construction was completed in May 1948, the conservation pool finished filling in July 1948, and the project was formally dedicated in May 1949.^[1][2]

Congress added irrigation storage in 1946. Then, on June 30, 1948, the Flood Control Act authorized approximately 38,000 acre-feet of storage for municipal water supply for Enid.^[3]

An acre-foot is about 325,851 gallons. That makes 38,000 acre-feet roughly 12.4 billion gallons of storage volume.^[4]

Storage was not the same thing as a finished water system

The 1948 law reserved space in a federal reservoir. It did not itself create a Canton-to-Enid delivery system.

A later federal contract for Canton — signed after the storage had been reassigned to Oklahoma City — makes the distinction especially clear. The contract says the storage is for raw water only. It also puts responsibility on the user for necessary withdrawal or diversion facilities and for acquiring the water rights needed under state law.^[5]

That later contract does not tell us every term Enid would have faced in 1948. But it does demonstrate a crucial point about the federal project:

Having reservoir storage available and actually delivering usable water to a city are two different things.

Enid did not access the storage

The Army Corps of Engineers' Canton history is direct: Enid did not access its storage rights. Because Enid did not use the storage, Oklahoma City began a series of five-year federal contracts in 1955 to use Canton water storage.^[1]

Those temporary Oklahoma City contracts did not immediately erase Enid from the project record. A revised Corps master plan in 1975 still described Canton as providing water supply storage “for Enid, Oklahoma” in the amount of 38,000 acre-feet.^[6]

That is an important checkpoint. Oklahoma City had been using Canton for roughly two decades, but the federal project documents still identified the 38,000-acre-foot municipal allocation with Enid.

Why Oklahoma City could use Canton differently

Canton is on the North Canadian River upstream from Oklahoma City. The Corps' water-control manual says Oklahoma City's water-supply releases are normally made downstream through the river system toward Lakes Overholser and Hefner.^[5]

That physical arrangement matters. Oklahoma City could use a downstream river conveyance route. Enid, by contrast, did not have the North Canadian River carrying Canton water to the city.

EPR's inference from the federal operating record: putting Canton water into Enid's system would have required a separate conveyance solution in addition to the federal storage allocation. The records reviewed so far do not establish the full cost or design of such a system during the decades Enid held the allocation.

The road changes in 1990

By 1990, the arrangement changed from temporary use to a negotiated sale and federal reassignment.

A contemporaneous April 18, 1990 report in The Oklahoman said Enid city commissioners had voted the night before to sell the city's 38,000 acre-feet of permanent Canton water-storage interests to Oklahoma City for $750,000.^[8] The newspaper reported that the price was three times Oklahoma City's original offer.

A second Oklahoman report, published May 3, said the Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust had approved the agreement to buy Enid's interests and rights in the 38,000 acre-feet of permanent storage for the same $750,000 price.^[9]

But the deal was not complete simply because the two cities agreed. The May 3 report said congressional action was still necessary to transfer the permanent storage rights from Enid to Oklahoma City.^[9]

That matches the federal record. The Water Resources Development Act of 1990 later amended the Canton authorization by replacing “Enid, Oklahoma” with “Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.” It directed the Secretary of the Army, through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to reassign Enid's municipal and industrial storage — along with the reservoir's irrigation storage, converted to municipal and industrial use — to Oklahoma City, subject to the cities' agreement.^[7]

The federal water-storage contract that followed identifies that intercity agreement as dated April 17, 1990.^[5]

Why Oklahoma City wanted permanent storage

The May 3 article adds important context to the transaction. It said Oklahoma City had never held permanent storage rights at Canton. Through agreements with Enid, Oklahoma City had instead been able to acquire temporary storage rights from the Corps of Engineers.^[9]

According to Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust general manager James Couch, Oklahoma City was paying $221,553 per year for those temporary rights. He said updated federal charges could push that cost to about $1 million per year.^[9]

That helps explain why permanent storage had value to Oklahoma City in 1990: the city had been using Canton for decades, but under temporary arrangements whose cost was about to change substantially.

Why Enid had never used Canton

The May 3 article also gives us the clearest contemporaneous explanation we have found so far from the Enid side.

It reported that Enid had never used water from Canton Reservoir and that an Enid official said it was unclear whether the storage rights themselves entitled Enid to use the water.^[9]

More importantly, the newspaper reported that the cost of moving water from Canton to Enid was considered prohibitive. Instead, Enid developed a well field along the Cimarron River west of town.^[9]

This does not answer every engineering question. The article does not provide the underlying cost study, pipeline estimate or staff memorandum. But it gives us a contemporaneous explanation that fits the infrastructure reality documented elsewhere: reservoir storage and a working Enid water supply were not the same thing.

Enid had storage at Canton. What it did not have was a practical, affordable way to bring that raw water home.

Why the later number is 90,000 acre-feet — not 38,000

The 1992 federal contract estimates the usable conservation storage available to Oklahoma City at about 90,000 acre-feet after adjustment for sediment.^[5]

That does not mean Enid's 38,000-acre-foot allocation somehow became 90,000 acre-feet.

WRDA 1990 reassigned both Enid's former municipal storage and the reservoir's former irrigation storage to Oklahoma City for municipal and industrial use.^[7]

This distinction matters because otherwise three different numbers — 38,000, 69,000 and about 90,000 acre-feet — can look contradictory when they describe different pieces of the project's history.

The missing document is still worth finding

The $750,000 figure is no longer an unsupported local legend. Two contemporaneous newspaper reports describe the agreement and the price, and the later federal contract confirms that Enid and Oklahoma City reached an agreement on April 17, 1990.^[5][8][9]

But Enid Public Record still wants the underlying agreement and Enid City Commission record. Those primary records could show the exact legal wording, payment terms, vote and any additional conditions that a newspaper summary cannot fully capture.

We now know the reported price. The next question is what the actual agreement says.

The Kaw connection was already there

The most striking line in the May 1990 article may be the one pointing forward.

The Oklahoman reported that Enid also held water rights at Kaw Lake and that officials expected to look there for future needs.^[9]

That means Kaw was not a sudden twenty-first-century idea that appeared only after Canton was gone. By the time Enid agreed to sell its Canton storage interests in 1990, local officials were already identifying Kaw as part of the city's future water picture.

That does not mean today's Kaw project was already designed or inevitable. It means the alternative source was already on the horizon.

So was Canton a mistake?

The new record lets us answer the question more precisely without pretending hindsight is proof.

What we can now document is this:

• Congress authorized 38,000 acre-feet of Canton storage for Enid in 1948.
• Enid never used the Canton water.
• Oklahoma City began using Canton under temporary federal contracts in 1955.
• Federal records still identified the Enid allocation in 1975.
• In April 1990, Enid commissioners approved an agreement reported at $750,000 for Enid's interests and rights in the 38,000 acre-feet of permanent storage.
• At the time, the cost of moving Canton water to Enid was described as prohibitive.
• Officials were already pointing toward Kaw Lake for future needs.
• Congress then authorized the permanent federal reassignment later in 1990.

So “Enid owned a lake and sold it for $750,000” is still wrong.

But we can now say something much more useful: Enid held a federally authorized Canton storage allocation, never built a practical way to use it, and in 1990 approved selling its storage interests to Oklahoma City for a reported $750,000 while already looking toward Kaw for the future.

What came next

After Canton moved out of Enid's federal water-supply picture, the City still had a large and functioning groundwater system.

The wells were not empty.

So why, years later, did Enid conclude that groundwater alone was no longer enough for the future?

Part 6: The Wells Weren't Empty — So Why More?