Lowrey Residents Thankful for Fresh, Plentiful Water
Cutline: The Cherokee Nation contributed more than $460,000 for a waterline and water tower for the Lowrey community.
TAHLEQUAH, OK — A partnership among the Cherokee Nation, Cherokee County, the Grandview Rural Water District and Northeastern Oklahoma Public Facilities Authority has supplied the Lowrey community with safe and plentiful drinking water. Cherokee Nation contributed more than $460,000 for the community’s new waterline and water tower.
“Being on well water, there were a lot of issues that we dealt with as a school,” said Scott Trower, Lowrey Elementary School Superintendant. “There have been times when we ran out of water and being a public school we were required to conduct a lot of tests on our water. This becomes expensive over time. The rural waterline has and will continue to be an asset to our school system.”
The project included approximately five and a half miles of waterline, a booster pump station and a 150,000 thousand gallon water tower that services the Lowrey area, including Lowrey Elementary School, Cherokee Nation Head Start and Lowrey Fire Department.
Elizabeth Parker, a Cherokee Nation citizen and Lowrey community member, appreciates the significance of the waterline.
“Throughout the years, we’ve had a lot of issues with our well,” said Parker. “The new waterline will help to alleviate issues like replacing pumps.”
Cherokee Nation’s Community Services Group funded the waterline because many of the existing wells in the area were contaminated by bacteria or were low yielding, and because a new infrastructure would expand rural water to hundreds of Cherokee families with poor water quality or no water in other communities.
“This project is very exciting to our program, not only for serving our citizens in the Lowrey community, but for the infrastructure that we now have that will enable us to take water on to other Cherokee communities in northern Cherokee and southern Delaware Counties,” said Billy Hix, Environmental Health and Engineering Director.
For more information about the Cherokee Nation’s waterline projects, please call (918) 453-5111.