You can’t step into the same river twice, but the river can step on you as many times as it wants. In July, more than 20 inches of rain in 24 hours caused the Guadalupe River in Texas to overflow.  A  1 in 1,000-year precipitation event in an area known as Flash Flood Alley, two cou nties south of the Oklahoma border, resulted in at least 138 deaths, including 36 children. In 2023, Tulsa investigative journalist Molly Bullock began publishing a series of stories about the Arkansas River. Her work documented the history of the city’s waterfront, a meandering tale of ignored warnings, repeated flooding and piecemeal efforts to make residents safe. Bullock asked difficult questions about whether the city of Tulsa was ready for 500-year events, that is, floods that were twice as likely to occur as the flood that devastated Texas. Introducing what has now stretched to 14 pieces of deeply researched investigative journalism, Bullock took aim at a long history of complacency from city officials. “Civic leaders’ relentless campaign to develop the river perpetuates a flood of distraction, denial and bad information that is drowning Tulsa,” Bullock wrote. “The cycle has little-understood consequences the city is unprepared to face.” The Chaos and the Sadness Bullock’s family moved a lot when she was young — Santa Barbara, Portland, Tulsa, Myrtle Beach — but her mother was originally from Oklahoma City and her father was from Tulsa. For college, Bullock chose Oklahoma State. She caught the journalism bug when she published a blog of her study abroad adventures in Slovenia and Jordan. At journalism school in Missouri, where students ran a local newspaper, Bullock enrolled in a newsroom course. It was May 2011; on May 22, tornadoes devastated Joplin, killing 158 people and destroying 8,000 buildings. At the second or third meeting of Bullock’s class, the staff discussed how they ought to cover the tragedy. Bullock raised a shy hand. “Should one of us go there?” she said. That’s how she volunteered. She wasn’t ready for that level of destruction, for the adrenaline that hung in the air like fog, for the chaos and sadness of it all. Even then, Bullock recognized that poor infrastructure could leave residents vulnerable. “It all caught up with me — these people didn’t have a chance, in some of these neighborhoods,” Bullock said. She interned for a summer at the Tulsa World and made Tulsa home after graduation. A few years later, she found herself serving as editor of the Tulsa Voice. A story came along that seemed fluffy at first: Simon Property Group wanted to build an outlet mall near Turkey Mountain, a wilderness preserve west of downtown. But it was anything but fluffy; it was about conservation, public outrage, nature, all on the banks of the Arkansas River. Bullock recalled the intensity of that period, putting out two extensive stories in a publication that wasn’t built for that kind of reporting. Then came the Tulsa floods of 2019. Denial That the Floods Could Reoccur It was far from the first time Tulsa was hit with walls of water. Major floods in Tulsa in 1908 caused $8 million in damage in 2024 dollars, and another flood in 1923 left 4,000 residents homeless and caused $9 million in inflation-adjusted damage. Floods across Oklahoma in 1943 killed 26 people and threatened the oil refineries on the west bank of the Arkansas River. Twenty inches of rain in 1957 killed seven people. The completion of the Keystone Dam in 1964 offered an illusion of protection, but floods along the creeks and tributaries of the Arkansas were so consistent that the city’s own official history pointed to a tradition of ignoring the problem. “Floods struck every two to four years during the 1960s and early 1970s,” the city’s website reads. “The response was classic: emergency response and recovery, reconstruction as quickly as possible, and denial of the possibility that floods could reoccur.” The water kept coming. A flood in 1984 killed 14 and did $542 million in damage. Two years later, despite the creation of the Department of Stormwater Management in 1985, the so-called Perfect Storm floods of 1986 caused $1 billion in damage. FEMA provided Tulsans with a 45% discount on flood insurance, but did nothing to make residents safe. Then came 2019 — floods killed six and caused $3.7 billion in damage in Oklahoma and Arkansas. A Flood of Information The 2019 floods were a tipping point. “It sparked my interest, my curiosity, my imagination,” Bullock said. “The energy — it was this gripping time. I kept going down to the overlooks where you could see the levees. I had this feeling that my next story would be about water or flooding.” Her reporting started alongside a friend, author Michael Mason, co-founder of This Land Press in Tulsa. In the summer of 2020, Mason attended a meeting of fishermen discussing the impending construction of the New Zink Dam; he asked Bullock to write about it. The duo conducted an interview together, but Bullock was quickly awash in a flood of information and realized she had to tackle the project on her own. Mason shifted to the role of editor; Bullock amassed 135 pages of writing. The question was how she would publish any of it. The Tulsa World, Bullock’s former employer, never responded to a pitch. National magazines balked at reporting about a river in Oklahoma. “The Gathering Place will be an island.”Fred Storer Then Mason had an idea; he’d heard of something called Substack. Launched in 2017, Substack offered authors and journalists a digital venue to produce work outside the constraints of space and style of traditional publications. The platform began to take off in 2020. Three months later, Bullock posted the first piece of a Substack page called Watershed.   “As a City, We Don’t Have Anything to Add” Watershed amassed more than 1,500 followers and subscribers from 39 states and 15 countries for a personal publication that straddled the line between journalism and scholarship. She has been invited to give talks across Tulsa. In 2024, Bullock interviewed then-mayoral candidate Monroe Nichols. After Nichols was elected, Bullock was invited in January 2025 to consult with city officials. The meeting surprised her: the officials appeared uninformed that the previous administration, without conclusive test results, had publicly downplayed reports that the river was polluted, Bullock said. Oklahoma Watch requested an interview with Nichols or anyone who participated in the meeting with Bullock, intending to ask what steps had been taken in light of Bullock’s reporting. The mayor’s press office provided access to Joan Gausvik, a utility planning manager. Gausvik said the city’s flood-mitigation efforts focused on communicating risk to residents; she was unaware of Bullock’s work. “I don’t have any knowledge of the meeting she had with the mayor,” Gausvik said. The mayor’s press secretary, Michelle Brooks, refused the request to interview Nichols, saying in an email that the city had nothing further to add. Making Up For Past Sins Over 14 stories, to date, Bullock has systematically challenged civic complacency. Tulsa’s residents, Bullock wrote, citing an All Hazard Mitigation Plan, had been left unaware of the potential for devastating damage in neighborhoods such as Brookside. Bullock criticized a false narrative of exceptionalism that told residents Tulsa was a leader in flood prevention while ignoring all-too-real dangers. Bullock revealed that a post–Hurricane Katrina study that documented the failing status of Tulsa’s levee system had been deemphasized as officials favored and funded cosmetic river development. Bullock excavated statements from officials who had attempted to raise awareness after careers of neglect. “I’m trying to make up for my past sins and the lack of doing due diligence,” the late Charles Hardt, then the Tulsa public works director, said in 2014. Bullock spoke to officials who disagreed about whether a floodplain could be engineered away. Tulsa city councilor Phil Lakin said that the Arkansas River had changed — what happened in the past could not happen again. Ron Flanagan, a nationally recognized floodplain manager, said that was nonsense. Fred Storer, a chemical and environmental engineer with more than 55 years of experience, told Bullock that Tulsans were in for a rude awakening.  “We’re going to be really disappointed when the big flood comes,” he said. “The Gathering Place will be an island.” Over and Over Again In 2024, senators James Lankford and Markwayne Mullin helped to secure $50 million for repairs to levees on the Arkansas River that protect 10,000 residents and $2 billion in assets. For Bullock, that was history repeating; the $50 million sounded good, but officials were mischaracterizing what was happening, Bullock said. In fact, Bullock said, work that was approved in August and still in the planning stages is an abbreviated version of repairs that were partial even when the efforts were first proposed. Bullock lamented a peculiar fact: it was not difficult to explain what needed to be done to the Arkansas River, but there was strange reluctance to doing so. “I’ve seen this over and over again, public officials saying what is happening with the levees and characterizing it as we’re finally making this happen, we’ve worked for so long, we’re finally doing it,” Bullock said. “But they’re leaving out what they are and are not doing with the levees.” Bullock said she was committed to continuing the work to raise consciousness on the dangers of the Arkansas River. “The story has a life of its own — the story wants to be told,” Bullock said. J.C. Hallman covers a variety of topics for Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at [email protected]. The post Journalist Claims Officials are Ignoring Flood Danger on the Arkansas River appeared first on Oklahoma Watch. ...read more read less