Waste of the Day: $50 Million For a Lake, Minus The Water

Topline: The line “If you build it, they will come” might apply to baseball fields, but not to projects undertaken by the federal government.

The lake that never was

The Army Corps of Engineers spent over $50 million in 1978 to build a three-mile dam and create a new lake in Oklahoma, according to NPR. The money would be worth $238 million today.

During construction, the river that was meant to feed the Lake Optima dried out. Water never arrived to fill the empty basin, nor did the millions of anticipated tourists.

The park facilities were finally demolished in 2010 at a cost $172,000, or $248,000 in today’s money, according to the “Wastebook” published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.

Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including demolition costs at the deserted Lake Optima.

Key facts: Lake Optima was meant to be a 100-foot deep “oasis” that would be used for agriculture, drinking water, recreation and more when construction began in 1968.

Even once the Beaver River dried out and the lake’s water source was jeopardized, the project continued wasting time and money. Engineers assumed the river would regain its flow based on historical data — not based on actual predictions for the future, according to NPR.

Demolishing everything built in anticipation

The park opened in 1978 with an empty lake. It was shut down in 1998.

In 2009, the Army secured $1 million to replace the guardrails on the road leading to the rarely-visited lake. Luckily, that project was stopped by public backlash.

Still, $172,000 was used to decommission the park in 2010. Most of it was to demolish “148 campsites, 11 restrooms, 2 trailer dump stations, and 1 chimney,” according to Coburn. The remaining $20,000 was used for signs and gates to seal off the road to the lake; just in case anyone wanted to try and swim in the empty hole.

NPR wrote in 2013 that “What’s left of Lake Optima now is a large, muddy puddle about six inches deep just below the dam.”

Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.

Summary: Maybe it’s for the best that Lake Optima did not work out. Imagine how much the government would have managed to spend if the lake actually did have water.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.