EPA To Buy Small Town In Kansas 260
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Wichita Eagle reports that Congress has approved funds to relocate the population of the southeast Kansas town of Treece, which is plagued with lead, zinc and other chemical contamination left by a century of mining. Estimates say it will cost about $3 million to $3.5 million to buy out the town, which is surrounded by huge piles of mining waste called 'chat' and dotted with uncapped shafts and cave-ins filled with brackish, polluted water. 'It's been a long, dusty, chat-covered road, but for the citizens of Treece, finally, help will be on the way,' said Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas who has been pushing for a buyout of Treece for two years. The population of Treece has dwindled to about 100 people, almost all of whom want to move but say they can't because the pollution and an ongoing EPA cleanup project makes it impossible to sell a house. The EPA has already bought out the neighboring town of Picher, Oklahoma, stripping Treece of quick access to jobs, shopping, recreation and services, including fire protection and cable TV. Both cities were once prosperous mining communities but the ore ran out and the mines were abandoned by the early 1970s. Of 16 children tested for lead levels in Treece, two had levels between 5 and 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood and one had a level of more than 10 times the threshold for lead poisoning."
Let me get this right (Score:4, Informative)
Corporations turn town into a toxic sludge dump.
Taxpayers pay for people to relocate.
=> Free Money solves the pollution problem!
By converting the planet's natural resources into limitless virtual symbols for value, we are approaching a point when we'll have to eat, breathe, and drink money.
I think it may be time to reform money: http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_a_new_beginning [realitysandwich.com]
Re:I hope this is a lesson to China. (Score:5, Informative)
Not yet: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1036/ [nasa.gov]
They're killing themselves, just to enrich our few and their few - no one has to emit that level of pollution to manufacture goods. Luckily for the wealthy in all countries, huge piles of cash make you immune to pollution.
I guess.
Photos of the pollution (Score:5, Informative)
Some photos from around Treese:
Chat
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3579757 [panoramio.com]
Cave Ins
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3579725 [panoramio.com]
Re:That's easier said than done. (Score:5, Informative)
No, it is perfectly legal to go after stockholders once a certain level of illegal activity occurs. This is referred to as "piercing the corporate veil".
This is just another example of what all the banks having been doing recently, socializing the losses and privatizing the profit. This unholy merger utilizing the worst of all possible economic systems is called corporatism.
Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas (Score:1, Informative)
Ah yes, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas. The same senator who voted to protect KBR from rape charges. He's such a class act.
Re:Funny how this always happens (Score:2, Informative)
The rich owners have been dead and gone for over 50 years. The mining that caused all this lead rich waste was done just after the turn of the century. There is a ton of wasteful spending in our gov't, but what lies around the cities of Picher and Treece is an environmental catastrophe of the worst kind that needs to be cleaned up. If you want to see for yourself, look it up on Google Earth. These cities are dwarfed by dunes of this mining waste (chat). Similar Superfund work in smaller projects are being done around the Joplin area, just 15 miles away. This area is also riddled with mining shafts, which cave in periodically.
Re:Funny how this always happens (Score:4, Informative)
The clean up from Nuclear Reactors is actually the easy part. Typical amount of radioactive waste per year would fit in the back of a pickup truck. Almost all of it is being stored on site of the various power plants. Where to put that waste where it will be safe for 10,000 years of so is the difficult problem. In the end a coal plant puts out as much radioactive waste as a nuclear plant. It just dilutes it and spews it into the air. Nuclear is by far the least of all evils.
Re:That's easier said than done. (Score:5, Informative)
During the 80s and 90s, a small consortium of businessmen, built cyanide leach ponds in the Nevada dessert. The purpose of these man-made lakes of poison, was to dump lowgrade gold ore into them, to leach out the gold.
The minute they used up the pits, and extracted as much gold as they were able to, they pumped the money out of the companies, declared bankruptcy, abandoned to toxic disasters they created. In fact, looking at the many millions of dollars it will cost to remove the poison waste, clean up the landscape, and remediate the poisoned water table, it will cost tax payers many times what the mining company was able to extract from their business.
From my point view, this was nothing more than an elaborate scam to convert our tax dollars into their personal assets (and a grossly inefficient method at that.) Add to that, the horrific environmental damage, and gross lack of conscience of those involved, and our current mining laws (virtually unchanged from the 1800s) are the perfect vehicle for destroying vast tracts of Federal Land (that should read as public lands, all our land.)
Though most mining does produce resources vital to our society, we need to include the cost of safe and sane mining practices, and proper land reclamation in the bottom line of that business. Not to do so, is to invite more environmental disasters, and growing human cost.
Just as an aside, recent analysis shows that the largest source of fresh water in the southwest (the Colorado River), is becoming increasingly polluted by toxic heavy metals from abandoned mines in the Rockies. The impact of this pollution will impact tens of millions of people, and could cost the U.S. and Mexico hundreds of billions of dollars in lost productivity, heath cost, and cleanup.
Re:rubber hose cryptanalysis (Score:2, Informative)
I think the rubber hose has been phased out in favor of the oh-so-versatile wet towel.
You fold the wet towel up tight across its width, drop its temperature to the verge of freezing, and Voila!
A cryptanalysis tool that automatically self-destructs while you stall the International Red Cross.
Re:I hate government spending but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:That's a reasonably nice ending (Score:3, Informative)