Christian Science Monitor on Tar Creek

By John Sutter

This Christian Science Monitor story talks about the many things on environmentalists' holiday wish lists. At the top for Rebecca Jim is a healthy Tar Creek:

An enormous environmental tally awaits the incoming Obama administration. After an eight-year pitched battle with the Bush administration, environmentalists see a golden opportunity
to begin making progress on issues ranging from climate change and water pollution to mountaintop-removal coal mining and energy efficiency in autos and buildings.

The massive environmental mountain awaiting Mr. Obama’s administration is chronicled in a 359-page wish list of hundreds of problems the environmental community is eager to start addressing once President Bush leaves town.

C.B. Podcast: American Indians and sense of place

By John Sutter

MIAMI, OK--Sometimes I think it's hard for transient people in urban areas, like me, to understand how connected someone can be to a particular patch of land. A reporter at the Navajo Times recently explained this connection to me as if the land were an heirloom. If you lose it, you can never replace it with something that would have the same meaning, even if it looks the same, she said.

The deep connections some American Indians feel for their environment was the focus of a recent conversation I had with Paul Barton, who works for the Eastern Shawnee Tribe in far northeastern Oklahoma. He told me about how American Indian people in northeast Oklahoma are worried that pollution from the lead and zinc mines at Tar Creek is altering their very way of existence. Some of the tribal ceremonies are changing partly because of metal contamination in the streams and sediment, he says. Berries that once were plentiful are now scarce. The land, in some places, has become a hazard instead of a provider.

I asked him to explain his connection to the local land for this edition of the concrete buffalo podcast. Click the play button to listen:

Tar Creek buyout to finish by Dec. 2009

[photo: pieces of scrap metal are still bent around trees in picher, okla. they're somber reminders of a deadly tornado that hit more than four months ago. a pile of toxic mine waste is shown in the background.]

By John Sutter

State officials say the federal buyout of residents in a toxic mining site in the northeast corner of Oklahoma should be finished by December 2009. Here's the newsok story on the latest updates at the Tar Creek Superfund site.

From the story:

Osborn said that with some luck and another inflow of funds, the portion of the voluntary buyout dealing with residents and businesses within the northeastern Oklahoma Superfund site remains on track to be completed in 12 to 14 months.

"The funding stream will determine how fast we are able to go," he said. "The EPA is committed to giving us the money; it's a matter of how they can make that happen."

The trust already has spent or is encumbered to spend about $35 million on the buyout. It has about $9 million in pending deals and expects to need $12 million to $14 million in additional funds to complete the process, said J.D. Strong, Oklahoma's secretary of the environment.

If you haven't heard about Tar Creek, I think it's important to get some background. The toxic site is centered on Picher, Okla., which once was the heart of a huge lead and zinc mining district. The mines are underground, and, in 2006, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, passed a plan to start moving people out of the area, because a government study found many house and businesses to be at risk for sinking into the abandoned mining caves. Inhofe previously had opposed any buyout plans. The area has been on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of Superfund (toxic waste) sites since 1983. Huge mountains of gravel mine waste are piled up all around town, and kids in the area have tested for high levels of lead in their blood. In May, a tornado hit the town, leveling half of the buildings and killing six people.

For more background, see this recent story I wrote for The Oklahoman.

A state you thought you knew: a reintroduction.

[photo: Wildflowers bloom this summer in front of a mountain of toxic mining waste in Picher, which is in the northeast corner of Oklahoma. The government is currently paying residents to relocate from the area.]

Welcome to Oklahoma's newest source for environmental news. I'm John Sutter, the author of this blog and the former environment reporter at The Oklahoman. (You may have seen my blog with the paper: Going Green.)

I'm starting this site because I believe that Oklahomans care about environmental news and issues, and they deserve to have a place to find stories on the topic. I am not an advocate or an environmentalist, but I do believe that decisions by government and business affect the environment. I'm here to make sure they're at least known and considered.

I also hope to use this site as a way to continue my interest in this state's diverse and endlessly interesting ecology. Even if you've lived here all of your life, you may not know that Oklahoma is actually home to more distinct ecological zones than any state but Alaska. Because of weird weather patters we see here -- with lots of wet air sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico and lots of hot, dry air shooting north from Mexican deserts -- Oklahoma has swamps with alligators in the southeast and sees dust storms on the high plains in the northwest and in the Panhandle. It's a diverse and wild place. One worth exploring.

Many of the state's environmental issues are pressing, yet they're under-reported. The state Attorney General is suing poultry companies over their alleged pollution of the Illinois River in northeast Oklahoma. Tar Creek, a former lead and zinc mining site, has been listed as one of the most severe toxic waste sites in the nation. Thirty years after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started work there, it's still not cleaned up or safe, and now the government is paying people to move out because of safety and environmental hazards.

In northwest Oklahoma, the lesser prairie chicken -- a hilarious bird with a certain YouTube celebrity -- could be headed towards extinction because of wind farm expansion. And, really for the first time, alternative fuels like wind and prairie-grass biofuels are being talked about as viable alternatives to Oklahoma's oil-and-gas-driven economy.

This is an exciting and important time for environmental issues in the state. I hope you will join the conversation here and elsewhere. Check out the blogroll for ideas about other sites to visit, and let me know what you think of this one by commenting on stories, or sending me an e-mail at john.d.sutter [at] gmail.com. If you have a question you'd like me to answer or a topic you'd like me to write about, just let me know.
--John