The Results of
Mining at Tar Creek
Environmental
Case Study by NRE 492 Group 5
Problem:
Mining has destroyed the land and water and poisoned
the Quapaw people who live in the Tar Creek area. Large piles of leftover mine tailings, called
chat piles, are in close proximity to local residences and school yards. These
chat piles are contaminated with heavy metals that pose a threat to children
who play on them. When the wind blows,
the contaminated dust from the mine tailings fills the homes of the residents. Those living around Tar Creek are exposed to
large amounts of lead, zinc, and cadmium from the watershed and the soil in
residential areas. The Tar Creek area has been on the National Priorities List
(NPL) for 20 years and has a rating of 58.15 (2003); the minimum score required
to be put on the List is only 28.5 (1).
In 1996, 30% of the children under the age of six living in the site had
blood levels of lead above 10 micrograms per deciliter (although 15 micrograms
per deciliter is the ‘lead poisoning‘ threshold, there have been severe
problems associated with levels much less than this). Chronic exposure to lead can affect the
immune system, nervous system, blood system, and kidneys. It may also result in
premature births, smaller babies, learning difficulties, decreased mental
ability, and reduced growth in small children (3).
Tar Creek is highly toxic and, for all intents and
purposes, dead. The fish have
disappeared from the creek, which has had a significant impact on the lifestyle
of the Native Americans in the area. The
banks of the creek are a sickening orange color and the groundwater has also
been affected by acid water from the abandoned mines.
The health and well being of the people in the Tar
Creek area have been put in serious jeopardy as the long overdue cleanup
proceeds at snail’s pace.
Background:
In the 1870s the Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA) illegitimately sold land belonging to the Quapaw tribe to mining
companies (9). The tribe was not willing to sell the land. However, the
transactions proceeded as the BIA declared opposing tribal members
“incompetent” and sold the land to the mining companies. Lead and zinc mining persisted from 1891 to
1970. The BIA also required the
mining companies to leave the hazardous chat on site because it would "be
of economic value to the tribe”.
However, it was later ruled that the tribe would not be permitted to
sell the chat because of environmental regulations on transport of hazardous
waste! Mining was performed by the
underground room-and-pillar method, whereby ‘rooms‘ were carved out as the ore
was removed and ‘pillars‘ were left to keep the ground from caving in . Once
mining was abandoned, water slowly filled these large rooms, dissolving high
concentrations of sulfide minerals and creating millions of gallons of acid
underground. Then, finally, in 1979, the acid drainage from the mines began
flooding out into Tar Creek from numerous open mine shafts, natural springs,
and boreholes. The surface water and some of the groundwater was instantly
polluted. The stream that bore the brunt of this pollution was named “Tar Creek.”
In 1980, the Governor of the State of Oklahoma
established the Tar Creek Task Force to investigate the acid mine drainage into
Tar Creek. In 1983, the site was listed on the National Priorities List, making
it one of the first Superfund Sites. The Tar Creek Superfund site consists of
five mining towns - Picher, Cardin, Quapaw, Commerce, and North Miami, along
with other areas of Ottawa County.
In June of 1984, the EPA signed a
Record of Decision for Operable Unit 1, allowing the monitoring of surface
water, acid mine water discharges, and mine water levels to assess the
effectiveness of the diking and diversion, which began in 1987. From August of 1994 to July of 1995, the EPA
sampled soils in High Access Areas (e.g., day care centers, school yards, and
playgrounds) and residential properties and found them to be highly
contaminated with lead. In August of 1997, a Record of Decision was finally
issued to address the problem in residential areas. From 1996 to 1998 1,542 lead-contaminated
residential yards were cleaned up (1).
However, approximately 75 million tons of chat remain on the surface of
the ground, while acidic flotation ponds cover approximately 800 acres (1).
Since 1991 the EPA has been issuing
Consent Decrees to the PRPs, requesting for participation in the cleanup of Tar
Creek. All six Primarily Responsible
Parties (PRPs), have refused to offer
assistance in the clean-up. In 1995, As
an alternative, these mining companies offered to perform a Community Health
Action Monitoring Program (CHAMP). The
EPA accepted (1). However, this does
nothing to advance the clean-up of the pollution resulting from the mining and
cannot be considered an acceptable contribution to cleanup efforts.
The EPA has been accused of
intentionally dragging their feet in the cleanup process because Tar Creek
raises issues that would affect the handling of mining sites all across the
country. According to Timothy Kent, Quapaw
Superfund Manager, the EPA has been in closed-door negotiations with the mining
companies, none of which has produced any real results. He feels that the
refusal of the EPA to force the mining companies into compliance may be an
indication of the EPA‘s noncommittal to the cleanup, and although it is only a
conjecture, some feel the closed-door policy is a cover for some underhanded
business and/or political dealings.
Since the BIA illegitimately sold
the land around Tar Creek in the 1870s, it is a PRP, thus making the Department
of Interior itself a PRP. This results in the awkward situation of one
government entity, the EPA, having to make demands on another, the DOI. Rebecca Jim, head of the community organization
LEAD (Local Environmental Action Demanded), suggests that this conflict of
interests at the federal level may be one reason the EPA is not asking the
Department of Interior to provide funds for the cleanup, even though it
profited from the sale of Quapaw land.
Key Actors:
Environmental
Protection Agency- The EPA has removed contaminated soil from over 1700 residences and
plugged 83 toxic wells. However, they
have been unsuccessful in getting mining companies and the Department of
Interior to take responsibility for their role in polluting the site.
The Bureau of
Indian Affairs- The BIA set up the sale of
land to the mining companies against the wishes of the tribe. By refusing to take responsibility for their
action, they are halting progress on attaining funds for the clean-up.
Mining Companies- These companies have
refused to contribute to the clean-up of the site. Some of the companies have already declared
bankruptcy, making it difficult to collect money from them. Asarco Inc., Blue
Tee Corp., Goldfields Mining Corp., NL Industries, Childress Royalty Co. and
Doe Run Resources Corp. are the defendants of the class-action suit filed by
residents of the Picher-Cardin area and the city of Picher and the Picher
School District.
Local
Environmental Action Demanded (LEAD) and Cherokee Volunteer Society (Learn and
Serve Program)-
These local activist groups have started many programs to educate the community
on the effects of the mining pollution and have worked to notify the federal
government of the dangers that the chat piles, tainted soil, and acid water
pose to the people of Tar Creek.
Demographics:
80%
of the site is on land given to the Quapaw tribe by the federal government when
they were forced to move from their ancestral home in Arkansas.
60-70%
of the toxics-laden waste is on land owned by tribal members. 20% of the
population in the Tar Creek Superfund Site is Native American. Tribes that are
represented in the region include the Cherokee, Miami, Peoria, Ottawa, Quapaw,
and Eastern Shawnee.
20%
of the population is documented as Native American. However, according to
Rebecca Jim of the LEAD Agency, these numbers are misleading. Many of the
residents are not 100% Native American by ethnicity, and they tend to deny
their ancestry in order to blend in with the "whites who are proud of
being white." According to Jim, a counselor at the local Miami High School
for 25 years, approximately 50% of the student body has a Native American
heritage. More and more Hispanics are also moving into the area as they find
work on surrounding farms or in the towns of Picher-Cardin and Miami (4).
The 1999 median household income for Picher,
Oklahoma is $19,722. The median house
value is $20,700, significantly below the average for the state. The percentage
of people below poverty level in Picher-Cardin is 29.23%, and in Miami, 23.38%.
Strategies:
In 1980, Governor George Nigh assembled a
Tar Creek task force to study the acid mine drainage. The results were shown to
the EPA and Tar Creek was subsequently declared a Superfund site in 1983.
After nearly ten years of EPA
inaction, community members banded together to work for the cleanup of their
community. In 1995, Rebecca Jim, a
counsellor from Miami High School, formed the Cherokee Volunteer Society (CVS)
to rally local citizens to the cause. A study coordinated by CVS found that 32
percent of the community children had elevated blood levels. Don Ackerman, a
masters student at the time, sent the results to the Environmental Protection
Agency and the EPA finally refocused its attention back onto Tar Creek, nearly
ten years after it was put on the NPL.
In 1997, Rebecca Jim helped form
another group called the LEAD (Local Environmental Action Demanded)
Agency. With the purpose of educating
residents in Northeast Oklahoma and conducting research on the local
environmental health hazards, LEAD is now in partnership with a local hospital
and Harvard University to study the effects of lead on local children. Through
LEAD, a program was implemented at Oklahoma State University Medical School
whereby students can opt for a one-month rotation at Tar Creek, giving them
valuable hands-on experience in the field of toxicology.
Another tactic was taken by students at Miami High School when they
realized that their elders were not convinced that anything could be done; they
decided to take the initiative and educate the community. Nancy Scott, the Cherokee Volunteer Society’s
Learn and Serve Program Manager worked with the teachers at Miami HS to begin a
Learn and Serve Program in the school.
Students conducted water monitoring and collected fish and plant samples
from the heavily polluted creek for analysis. Over the course of a year, more
than half of the student body became involved, tackling the entire gamut of
issues, including public relations, community awareness, and public health
communication.
In 2002, Miami High School students
organized a three-day conference with the governor of Oklahoma, the state’s
secretary of the environment and the EPA regional administrator, along with
other state and federal officials and public health and environmental
researchers. The effort put forth by the
students at Miami High School has gathered attention from Oklahoma’s
Congressional Delegation as well as the President’s Council on Environmental
Quality. The students have also
organized “fishing trips” at the creek to emphasize the fact that Tar Creek has
no fish. Additionally, they have led “Toxic Tours” to show national and state
leaders the pollution in their home town firsthand.
The most recent strategy of Tar
Creek activists is what a Quapaw Tribe official called “the largest
environmental lawsuit in Oklahoma history” against mining companies that
operated in what is now the Tar Creek Superfund Site in Ottawa County. The suit will ask for money to compensate
tribal members, and to pay for health monitoring and additional cleanup work to
be funded by the mining companies. The same remedy is being sought in a class
action suit filed against the mining companies earlier this summer by residents
of the Picher-Cardin area and the Picher School District. The defendants in
that suit are Asarco Inc., Blue Tee Corp, NL Industries, Childress Royalty Co.,
and Doe Run Resources Corp. the
Environmental Protection Agency has been negotiating with mining companies that
are classified as “primarily responsible parties” to help pay for the Tar Creek
Superfund work. Attorneys for they
mining companies have said that the companies operated the lead and zinc mines
by state-of-the-art standards of the day and that they were unaware of the
potential long-range dangers to the environment (7).
Solutions:
While
many of the chat piles remain looming over the community with no plan to have
them removed, there has been some progress for Tar Creek. Since 1983, the EPA has plugged 83 wells,
reducing contaminants reaching the Roubideax aquifer (1), the main water supply
for the community. Groups such as LEAD and CVS have been able to educate the
public about the dangers of lead. From June 1996 to January 1998, the EPA
managed the clean up of 1,542 lead-contaminated residential yards as part of an
emergency removal. Another 105 Native
American properties were remediated from October of 2001 to May of 2002. In
August of 2002, the remediation of 8 schools in Miami and Picher was completed,
finally removing some of the dangerously toxic chat. As a result of these efforts, studies show a
50% decrease in the number of children with lead-blood levels over 10
micrograms/deciliter (1).
Recommendations:
Unfortunately, the EPA has not been effective in
handling the Tar Creek situation.
Timothy Kent, the Quapaw Superfund Program Manager, has emphasized that
because of this, stronger litigation against the PRPs is likely to be the most
effective strategy, since they can provide the funds for cleanup.
In conjunction with the lawsuits, we recommend that
the residents of Tar Creek vie for more media attention. Certainly, national
publicity is warranted for one of the most polluted sites in the history of the
U.S.
While the CVS and LEAD have created
a strong local movement that has drawn attention to the issue, forming
relationships with larger and more popular national environmental groups, would
allow Tar Creek activists to gain access to greater resources and reach a
larger audience. One such group is
Riverkeeper, an advocacy group that monitors the Hudson River ecosystem and
challenges polluters using both legal and grassroots campaigns (8). Doing so
could considerably increase their political influence, legal resources , and
media access. Creating such alliances
would also allow the group greater access to financial resources, as well as
increase publicity due to the name recognition and notoriety associated with
the larger and more visible organizations.
Due in part to the lack of
governmental and corporate responsibility, and also due to bureaucratic red tape and constraints, the
situation in Tar Creek has become quite complicated. The EPA has not achieved much of what it had
originally planned. At one point in the mid-1980s, the EPA actually pulled out
of the remediation process and returned at a later date due to the vigorous
efforts of the community. While this is a success to be celebrated by local
activists, this long-overdue cleanup process is still in its early stages and
it remains to be seen whether Tar Creek, one of the first Superfund sites in
the nation, will ever be adequately cleaned up at all.
Key Contacts
Timothy
Kent
Quapaw
Superfund Program Manager
918-542-1853
Rebecca
Jim
Cherokee
Volunteer Society
LEAD
Agency
918-256-5269
References
1.
EPA District 6 report on Tar Creek (Ottawa County), Aug 21, 2003 http://www.epa.gov/earth1r6/6sf/pdffiles/tarcreek.pdf
2. U.S. EPA "Record of
Decision: Residential Areas Operable Unit 2, Tar Creek Superfund Site, Ottawa
County, Oklahoma." 1997. http://www.epa.gov/earth1r6/6sf/pdffiles/tar-creek-rod-ou2-res.pdf
3. "Tar Creek Task Force
Health Effect Subcommittee Report." 2000. www.ose.state.ok.us/documents/TarCk/
HealthEffectsReport2.pdf
4. Rebecca Jim, phone
interview, October 2003
5. Gary Garton, "Quapaw
Tribe says it will sue mining companies." The Joplin Globe. 2003. http://www.tribalresourcecenter.org/news/newsdetails.asp?82
6. Chavez, Will "Cherokee
citizen advocates clean up of Tar Creek." Cherokee Phoenix. 2003 http://www.cherokee.org/Phoenix/2003/PhoenixPage.asp?ID=362
7. National Tribal Justice Resource Center. 2003
http://www.tribalresourcecenter.org/news/newsdetails.asp?82
8.
Riverkeeper. 2002 www.riverkeeper.org
9. Timothy Kent, phone interview, October 22, 2003