As Oklahoma mining town fades, holdouts give up

Yahoo (AP) ^ | 7/31/09 | JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS

[DemforBush]

PICHER, Okla. – Two years ago, Orval "Hoppy" Ray vowed it would take someone meaner than him to make him leave the town where he was born.

But now the crusty, 84-year-old former miner is moving out, leaving behind a blighted, ghostly landscape, its soil, water and air poisoned by generations of lead-ore extraction that produced bullets for both world wars...

[DemforBush]

Interesting story.

[martin_fierro]

All the tornadoes passing through town probably didn’t help, either.

[BruceysMom]

My Mom was born there. I’ve visited a few times. Beautiful area.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The air is full of lead?

[GeronL]

Thats some very very light lead

[angkor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picher,_Oklahoma

And this is a PBS documentary about Picher, but it’d not too bad:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/creekrunsred/film.html

[cydcharisse]

Burn leaded gasoline and there’s lead in the air. Lead in the air is why we have unleaded gas now.

Lead dust isn’t real healthful to breathe in either.

[Jubal Madison]

I took a wrong turn going to Joplin a few months ago and wound up driving through Picher. It was a sad looking place. They had already bulldozed what looked to be several blocks from the tornado. If I remember correctly, there are other locations in Ottawa county where the govt. is buying homes and condemning them as well. I understand about lead poisoning, but can nothing be salvaged in a safe and economical manner? We waste so much in this country.

[olrtex]

I’m happy for the taxes I pay to be used to clean-up areas like this and buyout the residents (even with a Marxist Thug at the top of the government and even knowing that the government will waste more money than it uses wisely). Send the money to places like this instead of buying “clunkers,” providing free healthcare to illegal aliens and their kids, subsidizing Planned Parenthood’s abortions, subsidizing Acorn’s attempts to destroy America, and the like.

[FourPeas]

Picher is probably among the bleakest, most contaminated spots in one of the biggest Superfund cleanup sites in the country, a 40-square-mile expanse of former lead- and zinc-mining towns that extends into Missouri and Kansas. Within that zone, the creek spews orange from pollution, mine cave-ins and sinkholes threaten, and lead dust has fouled nearly everything.

Amazing.