TAR CREEK SUPERFUND SITE, Okla. — Decades of lead and zinc mining in the area where Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri meet brought prosperity and created boom towns like Picher in Ottawa County in far northeast Oklahoma.
In its heyday of mining, Picher's population swelled to 20,000.
In Picher and the surrounding communities, gigantic underground mines poured millions of tons of dusty, gravelly waste onto the surface.
The waste, known as chat, grew into massive mounds that dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see. Homes and businesses pressed up alongside chat piles.
Lead and other heavy metals contaminated the dust blowing off the chat piles and leached into the ground when it rained.
TIMELINE of Tar Creek Superfund site:
By 1979, contaminated water seeping out of old mines into Tar Creek turned its water orange and killed fish. The following year a task force was organized to investigate the effects of the mine drainage.
In 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency stepped in, designating a 40-square-mile area of Tar Creek in Ottawa County as a Superfund cleanup site.
Over the next two decades, the EPA made several attempts at remediation, some more successful than others:
- Children were tested for lead exposure. Lead poisoning can cause developmental delays and learning disabilities.
- Contaminated soil was scraped out public areas for children and from residential properties - but dust blowing off chat piles quickly recontaminated the areas.
- Public education programs about the dangers of lead exposure began.
- Families with children were encouraged to leave the area - and when many did not buyouts were offered to get them to leave.
As the toxicity of the superfund site's impact on children became more apparent, Rebecca Jim founded L.E.A.D, Local Environmental Action Demanded.
"Once it was discovered that our children, 1/3 of our Indian children, were lead poisoned, uh, we thought we probably ought to get organized and speak out," she said.
Initially, many families resisted buyout efforts, including Sue. In 2008, she said, "You know, I didn't want to, but looks like I'm gonna have to be leaving a little bit earlier than expected."
Her comment came after a deadly EF4 tornado ripped across a large section of Picher, demolishing dozens of homes, including hers.
In 2009, the EPA ordered the evacuation of Picher, with almost all remaining residents finally taking buyouts.
Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality Executive Director, Robert Singletary said, "I think there were 36 buyout offers that were actually rejected. The other businesses and residents accepted those buyouts."
Shortly after the buyouts ended, the town of Picher was officially dissolved. Most homes and businesses were torn down.
All that is left now is a Quapaw Marshal's Office, chat piles, and a few holdout residents who refuse to leave.
In 2014, ODEQ took over the lead for the Tar Creek Cleanup efforts from the EPA.
"But we don't actually conduct the cleanups themselves," said Singletary. "We have contractors and we partner with OU and different entities to help determine what the appropriate remedy's gonna be and design that."
ODEQ divides Tar Creek Superfund cleanup efforts into five parts:
- Groundwater contamination
- Residential contamination (there are still many residential properties within the 40 square miles of the Tar Creek Superfund site in Oklahoma)
- Mining Lab Chemicals (these were cleaned up in the 1980's by EPA)
- Chat piles
- Surface water and sediment contamination
Singletary told 2 News that the last category is still in development.
Chat cleanup is underway. It can be used in things like cement or asphalt production, where it is encapsulated, preventing lead and other heavy metals from leaching out, or trucked off to an approved disposal site.
"We had approximately 120 million tons of chat that was the byproduct from these mining operations," said Singletary. "We've addressed about 10.5 million tons of that, so that means we still have in excess of 100 million tons of chat that need to be addressed. EPA estimates probably another 50 years to get it completely remediated."
"After all these years, I don't think that's good enough," said Rebecca Jim. "Not, not good enough, not fast enough."
ODEQ continues to do residential remediation for homes outside Picher, but still within the superfund site's boundaries. Each remediation can cost up to $35,000.
In the town of Commerce, ODEQ partnered with the University of Oklahoma on a pair of passive water reclamation projects. One has operated for eight years at a cost of about $2 million.
At that site, orange sluggy water bubbles up out of an old mine. It is trapped in a retention pond with baffles zig-zagging across it. As water flows through the pond, the baffles allow heavy metals to drop to the bottom of the pond. By the time the water reaches the outflow, 99% of the contaminants are gone.
Singletary points to another encouraging outcome of cleanup efforts.
"In the mid-1980s when EPA first started doing blood lead testing," said Singletary. "At the time, the threshold that they utilized was 10 micrograms per deciliter, and at that time, in the mid-80s, it was about 34% of the children in this area exceeded that threshold. Currently, that same threshold is less than 1%, so that's a big success of the remediation efforts."
He also points out, "I can tell you in total it's been almost $600 million that's been spent over the last 40 years in the Tar Creek Superfund site."
What he can't say is how much the final bill for cleanup of the Tar Creek Superfund site will be 50 years from now.
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