It is about time that Uncle Sam started taking notice of the legacy left by lead and zinc mining in the Treece, Kan., area. Similar environmental issues that triggered the government’s voluntary buyout of homes and businesses in Picher, Okla., exist around the tiny Kansas town.
At the urging of two U.S. senators and a congresswoman, all from Kansas, the Environmental Protection Agency will be sending three of its top officials to take a look this week at the extent of damage left by mining operations covering 115 square miles of Cherokee County.
What they find, we suspect, will be reminiscent of the Tar Creek Superfund site that the EPA spent decades and more than $100 million trying to correct before finally deciding the mountains of contaminated chat and the potential for subsidence were dangers requiring a buyout of property owners.
We base that belief on the EPA experience in the Picher and Cardin, Okla., communities.
Soil reclamation attempts by the EPA in the Picher and Cardin area were quickly reversed by winds carrying heavy metal-laden dust back into yards, leaving them as contaminated as before.
Heavy rains sent groundwater pouring into the abandoned mines and produced red-tinged waters in Tar Creek that eventually flowed into Grand Lake.
But what finally tweaked the federal agency’s interest in a voluntary buyout was the danger that homes, businesses, schools and people might begin dropping into collapsing abandoned mines.
Sen. Pat Roberts made a comparison between Treece and Picher to the EPA: “Once you visit this town, and compare it to Picher, you can better understated the frustration of residents. Once the EPA sees firsthand the long-term damage and safety concerns facing the people of Treece, hopefully they will agree more assistance is critically needed beyond cleanup.”
The lesson of Tar Creek is that cleaning up the mess left by the mining companies is a slow, difficult process made even agonizingly slower and much more difficult by the winds, rains, an abundance of heavy metals in the huge piles of chat and the prospect of cave-ins. Picher showed that a voluntary buyout is cheaper and safer in the long run.
