Picher, Oklahoma and the surrounding area is one of the few places in the country that has been left behind by its residents because it was deemed unsafe to live in. The lead and zinc mining that drew in a population of 16,000 at the height of the mining boom before World War II is also what led to the town's deliberate demise. The decades of mining from the early 1900s to the late 1960s left behind millions upon millions of tons of chat piles. Chat is mine waste that was left behind after the lead and zinc ores had been extracted. The chat and mining also exposed Picher’s pregnant women and young children to lead, which led to stunted brain development. The EPA put the Picher area on its list of superfund sites in the '80s, but the Quapaw Tribe has led the most recent cleanup efforts because the site is largely on Quapaw land that had been leased to the lead and zinc mining companies.
Quapaw Tribe Hopeful for Continued EPA Funding to Remediate Picher Superfund Site
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Chat, or mine tailings, loom over Picher's empty neighborhood streets.
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Picher's residents took buyouts for their properties and left behind these empty streets.
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The former public authority housing duplexes are some of the only buildings left standing in Picher.
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The Picher watertower is the only thing taller than the chat piles.
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The chat in Picher is also being sold for commercial purposes to be used in asphalt.
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Some of the chat is sold to be put into asphalt, which makes it environmentally benign.
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An abandoned house along Highway 69 in Picher.
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An abandoned building in Cardin, which is next door to Picher.
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An abandoned building in Cardin, which is next door to Picher.
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Nature slowly taking over the roads in the Tar Creek Superfund Site, which includes the towns of Picher and Cardin.
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"U.S. Property No Trespassing" signs are everywhere at the Tar Creek Superfund Site, especially surrounding the chat piles.
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The leftover foundation of a home in Picher.
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Some of the roads at the Tar Creek Superfund Site are blocked off with these large cinder blocks.
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There are chat piles almost everywhere you look.
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Also left behind are buildings that once formed the Picher-Carding public school district.
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The Picher-Cardin high school mascot was the gorilla.
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The chat is laden with lead and zinc and has contaminated both the land and the water in Picher.
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An abandoned church on the outskirts of Picher.
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A gorilla statue in town commemorating a football championship win in 1984.
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A pile of chat can be seen in the distance as you drive into Picher.
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Tar Creek, which is how the superfund site got its name, flows through Picher and into the Neosho River, which then flows into Grand Lake.
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The creek contains elevated levels of iron and other metals, which gives it the orange color.
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Chat piles as seen using Google's satellite map. The Tri-State Mining District included parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri and all those areas are now dealing with cleaning up decades of the waste the mining left behind.
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The orange color of Tar Creek as seen from Google's satellite map.
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