EDITORIAL: Picher, Cardin officially are no more

Source: Tulsa World, Okla.迷你倉將軍澳Dec. 15--Ghosts can ultimately be laid to rest. So it is with the ghost towns of Picher and Cardin.On Nov. 26, the two former mining towns, at the epicenter of one of this nation's greatest environment disasters, officially ceased to exist as incorporated municipalities. The dissolution order signed by a judge came 30 years after the area became designated the Tar Creek Superfund site.The end, however, occurred neither quickly nor easily. Rather, it has been a long goodbye. The two communities owed their existence, and their demise, to the lead and zinc mining that thrived in the Tar Creek area for more than 40 years.The heart and soul of the communities, their people actually left years ago, thanks to a successful $50 million government buyout forged from nonpartisan cooperation, a rarity in today's divided political world.Overcoming decades of bureaucratic intransigence and costly, misguided and failed remediation efforts, then-Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat, and U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican, accomplished the near impossible -- getting residents out of harm's way.First came a state relocation plan for families with children and then a broader federal relocation effort for residents. All those who wanted to move had the opportunity to leave behind the contamination of the land, air and water.Starting in 1918, the area became the nation's leading provider of zinc, lead and cadmium. Extraction exacted a heavy toll, turning the Ottawa County area into an environmental no man's land with people still living in it.Residents faced ever-present health and safety dangers from looming chat piles covered in toxic, blowing dust; contaminated water; unstable, abandoned mines; gaping holes that once were mine shafts and cave-ins.In 1978, one of hundreds of abandoned mines (once kept dry by continual pumping) bubbled up acid mine water in the late George Mayer's horse pasture near C迷你倉尖沙咀mmerce, foreshadowing disaster. Caustic red-orange liquid stained the legs and bellies of his prized Arabians, ulcerating their fetlocks.Dangers grew graver. A 1996 study revealed that 38 percent of the children in Picher suffered from lead poisoning. School officials noticed a high incidence of learning difficulties, the result, they suspected, of toxic dust that sifted into homes and buildings.Spending $100 million, the Environmental Protection Agency removed and replaced topsoil, a project that turned into a fiasco with contaminated dust impossible to eradicate.For years, the future appeared bleak. Residents held slim hope of selling properties and moving to healthier environments.The towns' demise, while necessary, is bittersweet for those who called the area home and those who attended Picher schools with the gorilla as mascot.Yet this, too, is a remarkable victory -- a tribute to fearless leaders and a small band of advocates who persisted in getting elected officials and the public to listen.The Tulsa World published countless news stories, editorials and opinion pieces reporting dangers, and urging action. Finally, the government listened and acted to relocate residents from places with too much past and not enough future -- the site of imminent danger.No longer incorporated, their people and buildings gone, the towns exist only in memory.Left behind is an area that yielded 181 million tons of ore, which helped supply ammunition for three wars. Extraction, however, created a wasteland compromised by 300 miles of tunnels, 1,320 mine shafts and 170 million tons of contaminated mining tailings.Uninhabitable, the area might never be fully restored -- a stark reminder of how vast mineral wealth turned into vast mineral waste.But the people are out.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) Visit Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) at .tulsaworld.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesmini storage