Tar Creek - Superfund Site

TAR CREEK SUPERFUND SITE

INTRODUCTION

The Tar Creek Superfund Site is situated in the far northeastern Oklahoma close to the Oklahoma-Kansas b in Ottawa County . The Site consist about forty-two square-mile areas , though it is part of the larger Tri-State Mining District that includes area of Kansas and Missouri . The Site is made up of five communities : Picher , Cardin Quapaw , North Miami , and Commerce , and affects a about 20 ,000 residents (Myron 2000 . The Quapaw possesses a large amount of the land in the mining area . Starting in the early 1900s and

br continuing to as late as the 1970s , the site was extensively mined for lead and zinc ore . Most of the mine companies had their own mill , and Oklahoma mills in most cases served as central mills for mines operators in Kansas and Missouri . Milling the lead and zinc ore had resulted in a concentrate of the original mined material . The milling process however , produced some mine tailings that were originally regarded as an unmarketable waste product . The mine tailings were always disposed off by collection in piles or in flotation tailings ponds . Some piles are as high as 250 feets and contain high levels of lead and other heavy metals . Later the chat was sold and marketed to the construction company , similar to limestone gravel , for many years . Chat piles are either owned privately or held in trust by the U .S

HOW DID IT BEGUN

It began in 1870s when the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA ) illegally sold the land belonging to the Quapaw tribe to mining companies . Though the tribe was not willing to sell , all effort to stop the BIA from selling it failed and the BIA proceeded in selling the land and declared the tribe incompetent . Extensive mining of lead and zinc persisted from 1891 to 1970 . The BIA ed the mining companies to leave the hazardous remains on site because they thought it will be useful and be of economic value to the tribe , however , the tribes were denied access to the waste because of the rulings of the environmental authority on transport of dangerous waste . The miners used the underground room-and-pillar method , in which rooms were carved out as the ore was dug out and pillars were left to keep the ground from collapsing . Since the mining had been abandoned , water had slowly filled the rooms . The high concentration of hazardous material had dissolved and created thousand gallons of acid underground . In 1979 , the underground acid drainage from the mines began to flood out into Tar Creek from numerous open mine shafts , boreholes and natural springs , surface water and many of the groundwater was instantly polluted . The most affected stream was later named Tar creek

WHEN DID IT BECOME A PROBLEM

The problem started when the mine waste accumulated and the acid mine drainage enlarged , and it became an environmental issues since 1979 and has since been the focus of environmental restoring activities . The area was marked as the Tar Creek by...