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."
Funny how this always happens (Score:5, Interesting)
In the end it's the tax payers and not the rich owners that end up paying for the clean ups. It's my main opposition to nuclear power not the reactors it's the clean up from both the mines and processing sites. It's true of most mineral based resources that they cut corners on extracting and processing and the people living around the places and tax payers generally suffer. It's long overdue that we end the corporate veil for this kind of abuse and bleed the ones that profited dry to pay for the mess. There's a whole town full of houses we can let them have cheap to live in.
That's easier said than done. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That's easier said than done. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget that the majority of the mining was done to supply that war (WWII) effort. The US military used munitions in the *billions* of rounds, not to mention supplying the allies.
Just Google "treece, kansasa war effort"
Re:Greenies - broken accouting (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that this accounting failure is the descendant of a deliberate choice made by various courts shortly after the Industrial Revolution, when they chose to rule for polluting manufacturers and against impacted property owners in a blatant display of "progressive" social engineering triumphing over property rights.
re: a deliberate choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, and because we still haven't really learned that lesson (that property rights should *really* be treated as rights, and not subject to modification whenever government finds it more convenient), we're going to see this repeated.
It's certainly one of the ongoing battles with Monsanto corp. over some of the toxic waste sites they've left behind over the years. They've been playing all sorts of legal games to dodge paying for some of it though, including filing bankruptcy and spinning things off to a new company, Solutia.
If individual homeowners could file suits any time a corporation generates pollution that falls on their personal property, I bet they'd treat much more carefully. As it stands though, something like that would be a "David vs. Goliath" battle most homeowners can't afford to fight.
Re:That's easier said than done. (Score:1, Interesting)
How about starting with criminal charges for board members? Shareholders are one thing, board members are another. Board members should be culpable because they represent decision making at the top most level. If a company is sold, divested, acquired, etc, there are STILL culpable parties involved no matter how you slice it. If the organization ceases to operate, someone STILL is in charge at that time. If its a paper tiger and acts merely as a deterrent, so be it.
Silver? (Score:2, Interesting)
Silver is usually a useful byproduct of lead and zinc mining, It was an important side-product of the Cornish tin industry. The tailings of lead mines can contain significant silver.
Nevertheless. there are regions which do no have the traces of the silver you might expect. The price of silver is not that great: it can dip below three times that of copper. If no-one is offering to rake through their tailings then either (a) they are waiting for a better price or (b) there is nothing there to be had. A simple chemical test - flame spectroscopy would probably be best - would settle the issue one way of the other.
Does anyone have the figures?
Re:EPA plans to relocate town to New Jersey (Score:0, Interesting)
I'm wondering if the kansas legislature will really do their duty to consider this, one way or the other. I'm a transsexual (see http://transsexual.org/ [transsexual.org]), so I know what it means to want one thing and preach something completely opposite. I hope the legislature will come u pwith a coherent statement for the people... otherwise, many kansas ppl will probably not bother listening *sigh*
That's a reasonably nice ending (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I think this sounds like a remarkably civilized end to a nasty story, and hope they can get the people out. I've worked with people who had chronic lead and mercury poisoning from old mine contamination and some of them are really seriously screwed up.
(*) There was an old mine called the Yak Tunnel, dug not for minerals but to drain all the other mines, at a much lower level than they were, so it served as the sewage drain for dozens of huge mines. Whenever one of the old abandoned mines would have a collapse, a huge surge of contaminated water would dump out the Yak and right into the upper Arkansas, killing everything downstream for dozens of miles.
Re:Photos of the pollution (Score:5, Interesting)
I grew up near this area over the state line in neighboring Joplin Missouri.
Back in the 70s and 80s piles of chat hundreds of feet tall could be seen for miles. Chat is the local term for the mining waste -- in this case mostly limestone that's been pulverized and the lead and zinc removed. But there are trace amounts of lead remaining. Most of the chat has since been removed and used as railroad ballast and road base.
As kids we used to play in these chat piles -- you could find all kinds of interesting minerals and occasionally fossils. Occasionally the ground would collapse around the flooded and abandoned mines.
I was just back to this area several months ago and me and some friends spent the day taking pictures around Picher, OK and nearby Route 66. Picher is essentially a ghost town nowadays, but interestingly you can still drive and walk around the area, even though it's an EPA superfund site.
BTW, there's a geek connection to Picher. One of the companies to survive the mining is Eagle-Picher; they were an early innovator in battery technology and became a major supplier of batteries in aerospace, including the batteries for the Apollo missions. In nearby Quapaw, OK that built a boron enrichment plant producing boron 10 isotopes for the nuclear industry, too.
Re:Funny how this always happens (Score:1, Interesting)
Here is a great documentary on the town of Picher.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/53867/independent-lens-the-creek-runs-red [hulu.com]
Re:I hope this is a lesson to China. (Score:2, Interesting)
Does your conclusion that "They're killing themselves, just to enrich our few and their few - no one has to emit that level of pollution to manufacture goods." still apply in this case?
lollll....of course. Did I somehow convey the impression that I approve of the massive emissions of pollution anywhere on this planet?
We all only have one planet - and it is a closed system. If anybody piddles in the pool, we'll all be swimming in it - sooner or later.
The reason the U.S. of A. still emits massive amounts of pollution is the same reason that so much of our industry relocated to China so quickly: Our right - our corporations - see controlling pollutants as an expense that will cut into their profits/bonuses/dividends, so they resist stopping emissions here and, if possible and often preferably, they relocate to a nation whose people are unable protect themselves and their children.
Re:That's easier said than done. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, it was more of a people just didn't care about the environment and didn't realize the implications on humans/animals by dumping these chemicals.
Same thing happened in my town for the Saturn V rockets while at the development facilities in Huntington Beach, CA and Seal Beach, CA they had huge bins of DDT and Boric Acid that they would continuously overfill all the time. Well the spillover of the acid would just splash out the top and onto the exposed dirt ground, this was all done with residents fairly close and one of the biggest last remaining wetlands in California.
It was real nice for Boeing's profits and the war cause, but at risk of cutting corners. So now they have to spend several million dollar EPA project of slowly extracting the chemicals out of the ground and this happened all right next to Pacific Coast Highway.
Here it is and it was $50 million dollars so far.
$50 Million to Clean Up DDT Off Southern California Coast
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/23429/ [theepochtimes.com]
Re:That's easier said than done. (Score:1, Interesting)
"There is no record of a successful piercing of the corporate veil for a publicly traded corporation because of the large number of shareholders and the extensive mandatory filings entailed in qualifying for listing on an exchange."
In practice, corporation piercing only occurs when the corporation itself is a sham to shield the liability of a very limit set of actors. It has never, in US jurisprudence, been used successfully to go after stockholders of publicly traded corporations.
Simply put, that's not what piercing is for.
Re:Funny how this always happens (Score:3, Interesting)
Those sources do not support your assertions. They seem to be a list of the world's richest men. They do not show that 60% of the top 20% cycle in and out of that percentile.
The list also seems inaccurate. Bill Gates, for instance, comes from old money yet they list his wealth as 'self-made.' He never would have gotten anywhere if his family wasn't in the top 20% to begin with. Where would he have gotten the money to buy DOS?
Good luck on playing toady to those in power. Maybe if you kiss enough powerful butt they will let you in the clubhouse. But I doubt it.
Re:Let me get this right (Score:3, Interesting)
Has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with education. The factory pours chemicals into the river. River smells horrible. You catch a fish from the river. Fish doesn't look any different than any other fish you've caught. Therefore, you can eat the fish. If you never took a chemistry or biology class, and never followed a news story talking about carcinogens, then how are you supposed to know the fish could poison you?
Re:Funny how this always happens (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right, it wasn't 60%. It was 75% turn over after any 10 year period. through the 1990s it was actually 97%. Though you are right the top 1% which holds almost 10% of the total wealth doesn't have much turnover.
Re:That's easier said than done. (Score:3, Interesting)
Then, in the 80s, at least someone leaked information to the press about the conditions at the plant. It was closed, cleaned up for millions. They had to remove the topsoil in gardens of about half the cities houses. Below the plant was a vast system of catacombs, where waste had been illegally stored for 200 years. The guys running the factory bankrupted their way out, managed to dodge criminal charges and lived happily ever after. The workers, a lot of them having severe brain damage due to years of mercury exposure, never got compensated. There was a lengthy legal battle about it, but the factory owners bought the better crooked "toxicologist", who basically convinced the judge that you could gargle organomercury compounds without a problem. I wish I'd meet the fucker in a dark alley one day.
That's the joy of corporatist capitalism. Privatize the gains, socialize the losses, dump the externalities on society and get outta Dodge City when things heat up, leaving everyone fucked thoroughly.