Tulsa County Water Report

Tulsa County earns an A grade for drinking water quality, scoring 70.4 out of 100. Over the past five years, EPA SDWIS records 5 health-based violations — a pattern that public water utilities are required to disclose and correct.

Under the Clean Water Act §303(d), EPA ATTAINS tracks whether waterways meet quality standards for drinking, recreation, and aquatic life (reporting cycle: 2022). A large majority — 100.0% — of assessed waterways are impaired (4 of 4 water bodies) across Tulsa County's watersheds. The leading impairment causes are turbidity and fish bioassessments. Impairment does not mean tap water is unsafe — it measures ambient waterway conditions upstream of treatment, not finished drinking water.

USGS NWIS gauge data (as of 2025-11-29T00:30:00.000-06:00) puts Arkansas River at 10.2k cfs — flowing above its historical average at 122% of mean. Streamflow is a leading indicator of drought stress, sediment load, and dilution capacity: low flows concentrate pollutants and warm water temperatures, stressing aquatic life and, in surface-water-dependent systems, the source water quality for treatment plants.

EPA's Water Quality Portal (WQP) aggregates monitoring data from federal, state, and tribal agencies. Tulsa County has limited coverage with 8 active monitoring sites with 9,891 recent measurements on record. Predominant monitoring categories include not assigned and physical. More monitoring sites generally indicate greater scientific attention to local water conditions — and provide the baseline data that regulators use to set future impairment listings.