Tar Creek Superfund site

Tar Creek
Superfund site
Geography
City	Picher
County	Ottawa County
State	Oklahoma
Coordinates	36°58′32″N 94°50′17″W / 36.97556°N 94.83806°W / 36.97556; -94.83806
Tar Creek
List of Superfund sites

Tar Creek Superfund site is a United States Superfund site, declared in 1983, located in the cities of Picher, Douthat and Cardin, Ottawa County, in northeastern Oklahoma. From 1900 to the 1960s lead mining and zinc mining companies left behind huge open chat piles that were heavily contaminated by these metals, cadmium, and others. Metals from the mining waste leached into the soil, and seeped into groundwater, ponds, and lakes. Because of the contamination, Picher children have suffered elevated lead, zinc and manganese levels, resulting in learning disabilities and a variety of other health problems. The EPA declared Picher to be one of the most toxic areas in the United States.^[1][2]

The Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma originally owned the area and leased property to mining companies. Government rules restricted many Quapaw landowners from realizing money from royalties, which companies paid on these leases. In addition, the people have suffered extended adverse health effects, including high rates of miscarriage and neurological damage to children, as a result of the unregulated mining activities before passage of federal environmental laws.^[3]

The Tar Creek Superfund site is the Oklahoma section of four National Priority List (NPL) Superfund Sites that together encompass the Tri-State mining district, an old lead and zinc mining district divided by the EPA into the Tar Creek Site (Ottawa County, Oklahoma), Cherokee County Site (Cherokee County, Kansas), the Oronogo-Duenweg Site (Jasper County, Missouri), and the Newton County Mine Tailings Site (Newton County, Missouri).^[3] While some clean-up has been conducted, in 2019 EPA committed annual expenditures of $16 million for several years to continue the project. In 2021, Tar Creek was listed by American Rivers as one of the ten most endangered rivers in the United States due to contamination from this Superfund Site.^[4] Climate change makes this contamination risk worse: extreme rainfall increases runoff and leaching.^[5]