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View Full Version : What's this about Picher, OK, being a toxic wasteland?!?!



TUSooner
2/28/2007, 03:16 PM
A friend of mine sent me this story; sorry if it's been discussed I spent too much time working yesterday to notice. :rolleyes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6444811,00.html
(pasted way down below),
I straightened the guy out good. I said:

All these so-called environmental disasters are liberal fabrications designed to scare us into a Venezuelan-style socialist regime led by Hillary Clinton. What's more, we Oklahomans are 100% self-reliant and self-sufficient, never needing or accepting handouts like that alleged "government buyout" of Picher. Only Louisianans and other pathetic species would have anything to do with that sort of welfare. Therefore I must conclude that the story about Picher, OK, is a fabrication and that you hate America.

Read all about it.


Oklahoma Town Is Toxic Waste Site

Tuesday February 27, 2007 10:46 PM


By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS

Associated Press Writer

PICHER, Okla. (AP) - Undercut with mine shafts and buried under bleak, gray mountains of lead waste, this Oklahoma town is in the middle of one of the nation's worst environmental nightmares.

Cave-ins and sinkholes have swallowed up homes and children. The creek runs a ghastly orange with acidic mine water. And the air and soil are polluted with lead dust.

Thousands have moved out because of the dangers. In a couple of years, only a few residents could be left in a city that peaked at about 20,000 around World War II. Already, Picher is getting down to a hard core of holdouts.

Just this month, voters rejected, 142-132, a plan to merge the school system - which has cut athletics, band and art and is down to just 145 students, into two neighboring districts.

``There's nothing here in this town that can't be fixed. Ninety-nine percent of the people who write about the mines don't know squat about mining. They never wore a hard hat,'' said 81-year-old Orval ``Hoppy'' Ray.

Ray worked in the mines here in the 1940s, when the town had five movie theaters, a bowling alley and nearly two dozen saloons. Today, he runs a drafty pool hall and mining museum on the main drag. It is one of the few businesses still open in this dying town of about 1,000 people.

Picher is the center of the Tar Creek Superfund site, a 40-square-mile area that also takes in portions of Missouri and Kansas and was one of the world's most productive regions for lead and zinc. It provided raw material for bullets in both world wars.

For decades, miners, including Mickey Mantle's father, hollowed out miles of tunnels underneath this town and neighboring communities of Cardin, Quapaw, Commerce and North Miami. The mines closed around 1970.

Tar Creek has since become one of the oldest and largest Superfund cleanup sites in the country.

Dust from mountains of lead-contaminated chat, or mine waste, blows through town. The chat piles, some 100 feet high, look like gray sand dunes. Before the dangers of lead were understood, locals used to hold parties on the piles, and kids used them as sledding hills.

High lead levels have been found in the blood of local children. Lead can lead to low IQs and behavioral problems. But no studies have been done on the effects of the lead on the youngsters around here.

Last year, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study found more than 100 homes in Picher were in danger of collapsing into old mines. A mine collapse in 1967 took in nine homes, said John Sparkman, a Picher native and executive director of the town's housing authority.

Sinkholes are so common that Picher's city park, one of the last green, open spaces here, was fenced off to the public for fear the ground would cave in, and the main highway leading into town has been closed to heavy trucks.

``We've had people drive dirt bikes into them. People have been injured sledding down chat piles. Kids have fallen into mine shafts,'' Sparkman said. ``Luckily no one's been killed yet. They are just like warning shots being fired and telling us, `Let's wake up and smell the coffee.'''

In the past few years, parents worried about their children's health have flooded the school district with transfer applications. A nearly $20 million federal buyout program is speeding up the exodus. Since last fall, buyout applications for nearly 700 properties have been submitted.

Still, there are holdouts who say Picher can be something again.

``This is my hometown; this is where I grew up,'' said 18-year-old Mike Sweeten, a 2006 graduate of the high school who voted no on the school annexation. ``I want to stay here until the town closes.''

At G + J's Gorillas Cage, a Main Street diner named for the school's mascot, owner Joyce Cox plans to keep serving up the house specialties, Chubby Cheeseburgers, even if there is only a trickle of customers.

``I'm too dumb to quit, I guess,'' said Cox, who was born here and gave her age as ``too old.''

Gary Linderman, 52, runs the Ole Miners Pharmacy, the kind of place that makes deliveries and still takes IOUs. He has about 80 customers a day, many of whom moved to neighboring towns but continue to come here out of loyalty. Some folks have nicknamed him ``Lights Out Gary'' because they say his place will be the last to go.

Hoppy's pool hall gets a couple of dozen folks every Monday for music night, where anyone who wants to attempt a country tune can have a turn at the microphone. He doesn't keep regular hours and opens up the place only when someone wants to play.

So, what will it take to get him to leave Picher?

``Somebody meaner than me, I guess,'' he joked. ``Ain't nobody going to stand up in my face and tell me where to go.''

Sparkman said the buildings in town will probably be razed when everybody leaves, but the exact future of the town has yet to be determined. The mountains of mining waste are slowly being reduced, with some of the material destined for road construction, but it will be a decades-long project, the housing chief said.

The EPA has gone to court to try to recover some of the cleanup from some of the mining companies that worked in the area.

Sparkman said that by the summer, most of the remaining residents will be gone because of the federal buyouts. And Picher will become a place with tall weeds, no police or fire protection, and homes that are worth nothing.

The holdouts ``don't realize what a bought-out town will look like,'' he said.

OUDoc
2/28/2007, 04:12 PM
It's been an on-going thing recently. I've kinda wanted to go up there to see what the town looks like.

TUSooner
2/28/2007, 04:34 PM
It's been an on-going thing recently. I've kinda wanted to go up there to see what the town looks like.

The guy actually sent this link to an AOL news site a few pictures.

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/oklahoma-town-an-environmental-nightmare/20070227164709990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

It's pretty sad, but I don't see how anybody could consider staying. Maybe in 50 or 100 years the sinking will be complete and sombody can do something with the place. But it looks like maybe a worse situation than some neighborhoods that got flooded out down here.

OzarkSooner
2/28/2007, 04:40 PM
This is a sad story and I really feel sorry for the people of Picher. The three local news stations here in the Joplin area have been covering this story for a long, long time now. The people need to get out of town, plain and simple. Just last week though, the residents voted by a slim margin to NOT be consolidated into a nearby school district. They essentially voted to keep the Picher school system open for another year. I understand their frustration. Who wants to have their hometown yanked out from under them? The downsides however are bad...I hope that town gets some kind of resolution that will help the people soon.

Petro-Sooner
2/28/2007, 05:26 PM
I can remember scrimmaging them in football around 91, 92 or so. That really is a sad deal. Had a huge gorilla statue in front of the school. I thought that was the oddest mascot I had ever heard of. Thought it was neat to ride through Mickey Mantles home town.

Sooner_Bob
2/28/2007, 05:34 PM
Having driven through there many times I can say that it's not in great shape at all and those folks deserve any and all assistance they can get.

Some folks have left and their houses are about to fall apart because nobody wants to move in. Of those who have stayed some have had 1-2 feet of soil removed from their yards and replaced with "non-contaminated" soil.

Lead dust is a huge issue up there and will continue to be until they dump all of the chat back into the mine shafts.

swardboy
2/28/2007, 05:46 PM
Unfortunately you can't just put the chat back in the voids. It requires a special process using "fly-ash" and water in order to be approved for surface construction again. Way too many mines for that....

KsSooner
2/28/2007, 07:14 PM
Back in the day (mid 70's) went to many a keg party in the chat piles. Cousins lived in Miami and this was the place to go. Have driven through there recently and you can't describe how bad it looks.

Also went swimming in Tar creek when I was a kid. Expect to start glowing any time now.