OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson reminded attendees of the Oklahoma Water Law Seminar on Monday of a Willliam Jennings Bryan speech where he said if cities were destroyed they would be rebuilt and if farms were destroyed, grass will grow in the streets of the cities.

"But if you destroy our water, if we lose it, if we ruin it, if we don't conserve it, if we aren't careful with it, we'll lose our cities. We'll lose our farms. And even the grass won't grow," Edmondson said. "There is no more critical issue long range when we're talking about our children and our grandchildren than the issue that you all are going to be wrestling with and have been wrestling with already."

He said Oklahoma has been blessed with abundant natural resource, like oil, natural gas, wind and agricultural resources.

"All have been extremely important for Oklahoma, but there is none more important than water," Edmondson said. "I'm glad you're here to do something about it.

He talked about the litigation Oklahoma has been part of that involved water.

The state is in court with the Tarrant Regional Water District over their application for water from the Kiamichi River, Cache Creek and Beaver Creek, all of which flow into the Red River.

"They have asked in their request for water for more water to be allocated out of those streams than the total amount being allocated for all purposes --?municipal, agricultural, they've asked for more than all the allocations of water than exist in all the state of Oklahoma," he said.

Edmondson said under the Red River Water Compact, the Texans are entitled to take water out of the Red.

"But it has a higher saline content, it's not as clean and pure as the water in the Kiamichi, the Beaver and the Cache. They want to take water before it flows into the Red River. We're opposing that application. As are downstream states like Arkansas and Louisiana, because it's pretty easy to figure out that if you take the pure water and remove it before it moves into the Red, the Red is going to be even more saline than it is today," he said.

His office also has been in litigation over the Arbuckle Simpson and Ogallala aquifers.

"The Ogallala and creeks and streams over there that were threatened by very large hog farms. And we were in litigation for Seaborne Pig Improvement Facilities ... over proposed facilities and we've battled them over offsets and setbacks adopted in rules from the Department of Agriculture," Edmondson said.

His office has spent almost $19 million on the lawsuits against poultry producers like Tyson and Simmons over degradation of the Illinois River Watershed.

"We're dealing with a multi-billion industry and we knew it wasn't going to be easy going in," he said.

They have hired firms to do analysis, expert witnesses, had field surveys done and hired field inspectors to go out and take the samples.

Edmondson said Oklahoma is saying to the poultry industry, "You can't continue to surface apply it because it is running off and getting into the streams and particularly the phosphorus is causing what the Oklahoma agronomists call eutrophication, which is algae growth. ... And eventually it sucks the oxygen out."