Picher Oklahoma is Too Toxic To Clean Up

A Place the EPA Calls "The Most Toxic In America"

One of the least appreciated dead zones in America, Picher, OK, is described by our ever vigilant EPA as the most toxic place in the nation. Plundered by lead and zinc mining companies, the goons left behind huge hills of grey mine waste laced with lead. They also left behind an environmental and health catastrophe. The government bought all the property in Picher and surrounding territory and a couple of thousand residents moved away. The city’s post office closed in July 2009, and the city ceased operations as a municipality in 2009.

THE EVACUATION WAS MANDATORY
Mining began in the Picher area around 1917. It was in 1967 - when the contaminated mine run off turned the creek red and sinkholes were opening up into the mine shafts below - that the mines were shut down. In the meantime, kids climbed, picknicked and otherwise hung out on the chat hiles that tower over the town. Not surprisingly, all kinds of high lead levesl were found in the bodies and bloodstreams of the local. Cancer rates went through the roof (although a good corporate attorney will tell you that nothing can be proved) and the kids were performing well below national averages. That might be because a 1996 study which showed lead poisoning in 34% of the children in Picher. Study, study, study.

Today, a few remnants of the population remain, and the toxic dust from the hills blows freely across the plains.

WOW! TOO TOXIC TO CLEAN UP
The area - including parts of Kansas - was declared the Tar Creek Superfund site in 1981, but most of the residents didn’t leave until 2006 when studies found that most of the town was in imminent danger of collapsing into the mines. With 14,000 abandoned mine shafts lacing the ground below, 70 million tons of talings and 36 million tons of sand and sludge dominated the landscape all around the town, the EPA decided the place was just to damn toxic to clean up. The town — home to 14,000 abandoned mine shafts, 70 million tons of mine tailings and 36 million tons of mill sand and sludge — was deemed too toxic to clean up, and a federal buyout program paid people to leave. Hey, do you wonder who paid to removed the inhabitant and depopulate the area? The mining companies, do you think?

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