9 Questions about the Arkansas River with Tulsa Mayoral Candidate Monroe Nichols

- Do you think the general public understands that the Corps opted not to repair Levee C and not to raise the height of Levees A and B during the Tulsa-West Tulsa Levee Feasibility Study? I don't. I bet most folks in the public don't even know- if you were to tell them there was an A, B, and C, I bet most people actually don't know that that's the case, either. - Have you spoken directly with constituents about these outcomes of the levee study? - Not directly with, like, folks in the neighborhood, necessarily, but I do have some concerns. - If elected mayor, how do you see your role in informing the public about the implications of leaving Levees A and B at their 80-year-old design height and leaving Levee C to degrade, as well as the broader implications of an Arkansas River floodplain overrun with development and contaminated with industrial hazards? Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing is, is transparency. Like I, you know, I, the one thing I think that we have to be really aggressive about at the city is just being honest and transparent. I mean, like, if we are really out to protect lives and property, well folks who are in, you know, in a, in, in maybe the threat of any sort of danger need to know what that threat level is. And we should not say, oh, you know, we fixed this problem, and make it- give people a false sense of, like, that means nothing could ever happen to you. Even if we didn't get the repairs done, but we were constantly communicating about the dangers of not getting it done, that gives people more of a realistic shot at protecting themselves than saying, 'Hey, don't worry about it. We spent the money, everything's great.' You know, and then, and then we have something bad happen. So, you know, from the start of this campaign in particular, I really have talked about transparency being at the core of everything. And that is whether we're talking about how we're meeting the needs around homelessness, and that we're really actually doing things to change outcomes, whether we're talking about public safety and like, what does it really look like to reduce crime? I think the same thing happens when it comes to Zink Lake. There's no reason to hide anything. And if there is a reason to hide something, it probably means it's something that we shouldn't do. We have to bring a culture at City Hall to where we make mistakes, we fix mistakes. People should always have agency. And they get agency with information. And the more that we make that clear, easy to find, I think the greater degree of trust people have in government, I think the greater degree of safety people have in communities. - Are you going to get in the lake or flume during the Big Dam Party, and do you plan to participate in Primary Body Contact Recreation in the river? - Uh, it's not something I plan on doing right now. I can tell you that. You know, I have some questions about the quality of, of the water. To be honest, I've talked to some folks at the Department of Environmental Quality at the state. They have some concerns as well. And so like, I think we have to, you know, really prioritize safety over, you know, kind of, recreation. Because recreation is not recreation if it is not safe. - The city of Tulsa has offered no compelling evidence to indicate that Zink Lake water quality supports Primary Body Contact Recreation, which is activities where there is potential to ingest the water. This includes whitewater sports: the purpose of the flume. Decades of water quality reports suggest that the river might never support primary contact. Some years, this portion of the river has not met the criteria for secondary contact- a much lower standard. If you are elected Mayor, how will you reckon with the fact that the city has built a publicly funded primary body contact facility in the Arkansas River? - End of the day, like, you know, we're gonna have to take accountability if somebody gets out there and then gets sick. You know, I, I'm, I was not the mayor when we made those decisions. But, if I'm the mayor when people are negatively impacted by them, it is my responsibility. So, so I'll say that part. But I also, you know, will be really aggressive in, you know, us not letting people get out there if it isn't safe. And, and that won't make me an incredibly popular person at times, I am sure. I don't want people to get sick, and it's not just because of the liability of the city. It's like I care about people. I think having, you know, high testing standards that we're doing constantly to make sure that we know if people should be there, and people know if people should be there, and being aggressive about not letting people out there, I don't care how much money we've spent on it; if it's not safe, we're not gonna let people out there. - As the owner of Zink Dam, the City of Tulsa has a direct hand in the continued existence or extirpation of native fish species, which require long distances of unobstructed flow to migrate and successfully reproduce. Officials involved with the dam have stated that City of Tulsa plans to maintain a lake year-round from bank to bank. Executing this plan would further fragment highly endangered prairie stream habitat and deny the needs of native species. Shovelnose sturgeon, for instance, are part of a family of fish twice as old as the T-Rex. They play a critical role in their ecosystem. If you are elected mayor, will you follow the current plan to maintain a lake year-round? If so, how will you explain this to constituents who want to keep native species in the Arkansas River? - Yeah, I mean, again, this is not something that I've spent a ton of time thinking about. What is the balance there? Is there a balance there? That'd be my first question. We would not be the first city to try to figure out how to, you know, you know, do what we're doing from a river and recreational standpoint, but also try to maintain, you know, a species- fish, and everything else, right? Like, so- sometimes you do things, and you move a little too fast, and when you move fast, you're kind of, you know, slamming the door on things that you shouldn't slam the door on. If we need to pump the brakes a little bit and do it right, we'll just pump the brakes a little bit and do it right. And, and there's just gonna have to be some folks who are experts in the field that are gonna have to advise me as mayor, and, and our team. And Tulsa in particular, frankly, given, you know, that we're all Indian reservation, I think we have like this additional responsibility to be good stewards of the land that we're on. We got the wildlife department, you know, we got the tribes, we got other outside experts. So we all that, we all can be working together to figure out how do we, how do we balance all these things. - So, there was a compromise requested by Josh Johnston, who at the time was fisheries supervisor for Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. In 2021, he asked the city to leave the gates of Zink Dam down from March 1st through June 1st to support fish migration and spawning. Would you be open to that? - I would. Why'd they say no? - They said that they are obligated to maintain a recreational lake. - Well, I can tell you my attitude is, is that you listen to experts. You make the balance. I, I'm, I don't, I didn't, I did not- This is, this is news to me in a lot of ways. But if there's a recommendation made by somebody who knows what they're doing and knows what they're talking about, and we pressure test that against, you know, what is actually gonna, you know, make, make things work out alright- I'm very comfortable with exploring that, for sure. Repeat that again? How- what do you want to- leave the dam open? He asked the city to leave the gates of Zink Dam down from March 1st through June 1st to support fish migration and spawning. Because, from a species standpoint, that was about enough time to cover the migration and spawning season for the critical species. You know, ideally, the fish would have their full migration and spawning season to fulfill their life histories, you know? But this was sort of like, a last-ditch effort on the part of people who are concerned about native species. -Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - I mean, those are the kind, those are the kind of balances that I'm looking for. - Okay. Around the world, communities are removing dams to restore wildlife habitat, protect tribal sovereignty, prevent drownings, beautify landscapes, eliminate costly maintenance, and build climate resilience. If you are elected mayor, will you move forward with the City of Tulsa's plan to build another low-head dam at Jenks and south Tulsa? - I can't make a commitment one way or the other, as much as I would love to. But it is something that, that I am very interested in evaluating. Bringing in folks who are highly critical would be something that I would, would want to do. And what I can commit to is that, you know, not making the decision about something that doesn't include people who have strong opinions the other direction. Getting elected mayor for me, is gonna be because people are asking for something different, and we're changing the way in which we make decisions. And you know, we are maybe even considering things we haven't considered before. - Are you aware of the legal history granting and affirming tribes' rights to the riverbed and water of the Arkansas River within their reservation boundaries, and consequently, the fact that Muscogee Nation has the rights to the riverbed and water in the Zink Lake area? - More than anything, we talk about co-governing with tribes. It goes even beyond the lake. This is all Indian reservation. Osage, Creek and Cherokee. So, yeah, no, I- I am aware. And I think when we do that, not only does it make this community better, it means that we are always affirming and standing up for tribal sovereignty. But it also means we're able to deal with a lot of these issues in ways in which we just haven't had the ability to deal with them before.