Picher:
Heavy Metal Playground

For decades residents in and around Picher, Oklahoma were unknowingly poisoned by their environment. 

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    Nancy English, a resident from a nearby town and former employee of the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency, became well-versed in the hazards of lead poisoning throughout the state of Oklahoma during her employment. Her expertise has made her skeptical of the government's oversight of the environmental damage in Picher.

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    “I'm sure the government knew,” English said. “Of course they knew. But it wasn't taught anywhere. It wasn't a thing. Kind of like tobacco. You know…people smoked for years. I think it's the same thing with [the] lead.” 

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    During the early 20th century, Picher was seen as a mining mecca. Picher and the surrounding Tri-State district produced most of the lead and zinc ore necessary for the U.S. government during both World Wars, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. Mining production has since ceased and left behind waste called chat. Chat is coarse-grained mining waste containing heavy metals, including lead and zinc. 

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The chat that remains still has poisonous effects on the environment, many of which cannot be fully mitigated or repaired in the near future. In the most recent five-year report by the Environmental Protection Agency [1], progress has been made on the Site, but there is still much to be done. 

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When the toxic effects of chat were first uncovered in the 1990s, The Federal Gov. designated the nearby Tar Creek as a superfund site with Picher under that domain. This designation allowed the government to issue blanket funding to Local, State, Federal and Indigenous authorities to begin the long process of environmental remediation. 

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English participated in eight hours of lead-based training at Georgia Tech, covering topics such as lead abatement and lead testing. She also helped propose a grant for the first multiagency program dedicated to bringing awareness to lead poisoning in Oklahoma in the early ‘90s. The grant was denied by the federal government, who questioned the idea of providing funding for a program that was not already in place.

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    With such extensive knowledge of the damage that lead can impose on humans, English was shocked at the denial she encountered when trying to talk about its effects.

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    “I remember I called a meeting with a lot of the doctors down at OU Med Center to talk about lead poisoning in children, and it was a total train wreck,” English reminisced. “They said there is no such thing. Children are not affected by lead. We will not have anything to do with this. And they just walked out.”

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 Former Picher resident Melissa Jordan recalls the time as confusing. Mired by ambiguity and potentially even deceit, the government testing process was cursory at best, and life-altering at worst.

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“There’s been some questions, questions in my own mind,” Jordan admitted. “And other people I’m sure have lots of questions about different things. I know there seemed to be, in some areas, a lot of infertility. Whether that had anything to do with [chat], or that was just life in general, I don’t know. They didn’t do a whole lot of testing for adults and the effects on them.”

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    The government has all but neglected testing adults for their lead blood levels, opting to reserve the testing for children. This has led some of our sources to become highly skeptical of federal health institutions, although in hindsight, the government’s reasoning behind focusing on their children was rational. 

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    Throughout their youth, many of the adults near Picher would frequent the chat piles, using them as their personal playgrounds. Nearby resident Clark Sapp remembers his playtime on the chat quite fondly. 

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    “We had the run of it, and I mean the run of that town… there were these huge chat piles from the mining industry, and that was just a playground for all of us,” Sapp said.

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    While enjoyable and seemingly harmless, their descendants would go on to reap the undesirable ramifications of their teens.

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    According to multiple former residents, a sizable portion of the children of Picher experienced birth defects, neurological disorders and other serious long-term health issues.

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 Among the former Picher residents, Rhonda Larson has noticed health complications in her own family, watching first-hand as her daughter struggles with her own issues.

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    “She was born without a growth plate in one knee,” Larson said. “She was diagnosed with Blount's Disease which caused that leg to bow outward significantly. A nurse said it may have been caused by the lead. The doctor didn't say anything about it. I figured the nurse was biased. I know I was. I no longer trusted anyone associated with the lead testing.”

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    The younger family members of English and Jordan have both experienced health complications as well, although theirs’ is of the neurological variety. Jordan has multiple cousins with learning disabilities, while English’s children both struggle with the same mental health disorder. 

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    “My children used to spend part of the summer's up there with their grandmother, and they're both bipolar, which is a neurological defect,” English said. “You know, I don't know. I can't pin that on lead, but it wasn't good.”

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The chat’s impact was widespread. Over time, the enormous piles seeped into the water supply, colorizing and toxifying it in the process. According to the EPA’s first Five-Year Review on the site, “the oxidation of the iron in the acid mine discharge causes Tar Creek to run red at sites 4b, 10 and 20.” The sediments found in Tar Creek include lead, zinc, iron and cadmium. [2]

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The spectacle of Tar Creek became a tourist attraction for nearby residents such as Tricia Mixson.

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“The Tar Creek brought people in,” Mixson said. “People came from all over to see a Tar Creek that was hazardous, [but] no one knew was hazardous. So that’s what college kids did; you went to see the Tar Creek.”

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While visibly aesthetic, the water was borderline unusable. Larson recalls the town’s water as orange and rusty when she was a teenager, while English’s family abandoned the town’s water supply altogether.

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“You know, Mom and Dad had a well, and then they decided to go on to city water,” English said. “You know, they’d lived outside of town on a farm but they couldn’t trust the water. And so rather than trust their well, they went on city water.”

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In the EPA’s most recent five-year review, an interview with Robert W. Nairn, director of the Center for Restoration of Ecosystems and Watersheds and Watersheds claims it is possible to have clean water in Tar Creek someday. 

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“Tar Creek watershed indicate that these waters are amenable to passive treatment.” Nairn said. “Tar Creek can run clean and clear again, with appropriately designed, sized and operated passive treatment systems.”

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Although the future is brighter for the environment in Picher, the government’s untimely cleaning efforts likely continue to have negative health effects on the children of Picher to this day.

According to the state Department of Environmental Quality’s sixth Five-Year Review, children in the area are more likely to have elevated blood lead levels than other children across the state. Ottawa County has on average 2.68% more children per year with elevated blood lead levels. [3]

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    This review, which was released in 2020, shows that the chat which was originally deposited nearly a hundred years ago still has devastating effects on local populations and the environment. 

Representatives from the Department of Environmental Quality failed to respond to requests for interviews. 
 

Sources

[1] Sixth Five-year report https://semspub.epa.gov/work/06/100021610.pdf

[2] First Five-year Report: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/06/1005834.pdf

[3] Excel spreadsheet Brylee made with information from 

https://semspub.epa.gov/work/06/100021610.pdf

Summary of Childhood Blood Lead Levels, 2014 to 2018