Polluted Picher, Oklahoma Turned into a Ghost Town by Mining
May 13, 2008 · Print This Article
A city in Oklahoma is left with just a tiny fraction of its population as residents move away from the site of mining gone wrong. Picher began as an Old West mining town that sounds like it could have been a movie set: saloons and movie parlors lined the streets, and at its peak it boasted nearly 20,000 residents. Now, only a few dozen remain in a town with no city water and no police, with a backdrop of barren, lead-laced hills.
From MSNBC:
Picher’s mines closed around 1970; the wounds they inflicted on the people and land never healed.
Today, Tar Creek runs orange with acidic water that flooded the mines. Cave-ins and sinkholes threaten; a mine collapse in 1967 took nine homes.
Bleak, gray mountains of lead-contaminated chat, or mine tailings, loom around town. Some rise 100 feet and look like sand dunes. They have names like Sooner, St. Joe and Golden Rod 8.
For years, before most knew better, the gravel-coated piles doubled as sledding hills for kids, a Lover’s Lane for teenagers and a makeshift proving grounds for dirt bikes and the high school’s track team.
It will take at least 15 more years to haul the stuff off, for use in highway construction projects, but that’s not soon enough.
The polluted dust that blows through every nook of this place has already affected a generation.
The federal government has started a buyout program and is helping residents move elsewhere. Those who plan to stay behind say they don’t care if it’s a ghost town; they won’t leave – they feel like they’re losing their heritage. One resident compared it to a death, and said they cried every day.
Something about this is so foreboding; the ghost of America’s future. It seems like what could happen to our country on a large scale if we sit back and do nothing about climate change. If we just allow the pollution to continue. It seems as though Picher, Oklahoma is a warning to us all: this could happen to your hometown, too. Maybe not from mining pollution, but from global warming-exacerbated natural disasters, a lack of water or severe food shortage. The time to act is yesterday, and we’d best do all we can to catch up.
Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Charlie Riedel / AP
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On Saturday, tornadoes tore through Picher, a town that once was a world hub for lead and zinc mining. Hundred-foot-high mountains of gravel mine waste still tower around the town. The gravel, which locals call “chat,” can be dangerous to humans because it contains traces of lead, which is a neurotoxin.
The storms appear to have tossed the gravel around town.
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Eep! Thanks for the update
“they feel like they’re losing their heritage. ”
Yup. It’s gone. Now… RUN FOR YOUR LIFE THERE ARE POISONOUS MOUNTAINS AND TORNADOES OF CARCINOGENS.
Having grown up near a recovering super-fund site, I can relate, but when there’s actively poison about, there’s no quaint home-town feel that is keeping me there. No way. It sucks, but there’s nothing you can do, and sticking around can only add physical harm to your mental harm.