Tulsa, Oklahoma Water Outage Today

Tulsa water system at a glance

EPA lists one municipal water system for Tulsa, serving about 413,000 people. Customers know it as City of Tulsa Water and Sewer; the name on your bill is the one to call.

Where Tulsa's tap water comes from

Tap water in Tulsa starts as surface water. Tulsa takes it from Spavinaw Lake and Oolagah Lake and runs it through treatment before it reaches the mains. Treatment points named in EPA's facility list include Tulsa Mohawk WTP. After treatment the water is held in 12 storage tanks and reservoirs, which is the buffer that keeps taps running for a few hours after a pump or main fails.

The outage angle. Because the water is drawn from open surface sources, it has to be filtered and disinfected continuously. A plant problem therefore hits everyone at once, unlike a main break, which only dries up the blocks on either side of the damaged pipe.

Why the water goes out in Tulsa

These are the causes that match the record for Tulsa, listed roughly in order of how much they matter here.

• Freezing weather. Tulsa sees about 67 days a year with a low at or below 32°F, and 11 days at or below 20°F. The coldest morning in the 2015 through 2025 record came on February 16, 2021. The longest stretch with highs that never rose above freezing ran 10 days, ending February 18, 2021. Frozen service lines and meters cause single-address outages, while ground frost and thaw cycles crack older mains and produce the street-wide breaks.
• Flooding and heavy rain. NOAA logged 189 flood, flash flood and heavy rain reports in Tulsa County from 2015 through 2026, and 9 days a year bring an inch of rain or more. High water can wash out the ground under buried pipe, flood pump stations and push treatment plants past their limits, which is why boil notices so often follow a flood.
• Storm-driven power loss. Thunderstorm wind, hail and tornado reports in Tulsa County number 659 since 2015. Pump stations and treatment plants that depend on Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) run on the electric grid, so a storm that downs power lines can lower water pressure even when no pipe is damaged.
• Summer demand. Tulsa has about 32 days a year at or above 95°F and 12 at or above 100°F, and the hottest day in the record came on July 19, 2022. Lawn irrigation and cooling push demand to its yearly high, so pumps run hard, tanks drain faster than they refill and pressure sags on high ground in the evening.
• Older neighborhoods and pipe. 44.9% of occupied homes in Tulsa were built before 1970, against 35.5% nationally. Streets of that age tend to sit on cast iron and early steel mains that are near or past their design life, which is where most breaks start.
• Construction and third-party damage. A backhoe or boring crew that hits a main is among the most common reasons a single block goes dry without warning. Utilities handle those the same way as any break: isolate, repair, flush.

Tulsa weather and water-main stress, 2015–2025

Main break season in Tulsa runs from late fall into early spring, with the coldest stretch around December through February.

A note on the numbers: they are modeled for the city center and averaged over eleven years, so they show how often Tulsa sees each kind of weather, not what any one thermometer read on a given day.

Is Tulsa water safe? Boil notices and EPA record

EPA lists no health-based violations for Tulsa since 2015. It also lists 23 monitoring or reporting entries that are about paperwork rather than water quality, such as a missed sample or a late report.

Most recent entries, all monitoring or reporting:

• April 2018: A missed or late disinfection byproduct monitoring sample
• April 2018: A missed or late disinfection byproduct monitoring sample

When Tulsa loses pressure after a break or a failed test, City of Tulsa Water and Sewer asks affected customers to boil water for drinking and cooking. The notice ends only after samples come back clean, which usually takes one to two days after service returns, and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) supervises the process.

What the lead tests and housing age say about Tulsa

The most recent 90th-percentile lead result filed for Tulsa is 1.2 ppb (2025). The federal action level is 15 ppb, so that result is far from the limit.

The age of the housing matters more than the utility's test average: 44.9% of occupied homes in Tulsa predate 1970 and 1986 was the year lead pipe and solder were banned. Flush the cold tap after an outage and ask City of Tulsa Water and Sewer whether your service line is on its lead inventory.

How long a water outage lasts in Tulsa

Most repairs of an ordinary main break in Tulsa take half a day once the crew is on site. Bigger mains, deep bury and busy roads stretch that to a day or more. With 413,000 people on the system, a break on a main that feeds a whole district can leave thousands of homes dry at once, and crews may close valves several blocks away to isolate it.

Ask City of Tulsa Water and Sewer for a restoration estimate when you report the outage; for large breaks it is normally posted and updated as the repair progresses.

Emergency water storage for Tulsa households

The average household in Tulsa has about 2.4 people, so FEMA's minimum of one gallon per person per day comes to roughly 7 gallons for three days and 34 gallons for two weeks.

• Heat: 32 days a year top 95°F here, so plan for more than the one-gallon minimum, and keep extra for pets.
• Your water heater tank holds 30 to 50 gallons of clean water. Turn off the power or gas to it first, then drain from the valve at the bottom.
• Fill the bathtub and a few large pots as soon as you hear a break is likely; that water is for flushing and washing, not drinking.

Tulsa versus neighboring water utilities

Water outage pages for nearby cities

Broken Arrow, OK · Oklahoma City, OK · Fayetteville, AR · Norman, OK