By Lisa Hicks
Cherokee Phoenix Staff
OTTAWA COUNTY, Okla. - Chat is the most visible of the many problems that plague Tar Creek. Mounds of chat and tailings - leftover mine waste - mark the landscape along State Highway 69 through Ottawa County. Nearly 75 million tons of the gray gravel sullies the landscape in the 40-square mile area of the Tar Creek Superfund Site. That's nearly 800 acres of pollution or 60 million cubic yards. According to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimate, it would take 250 train loads of 100 cars each shipping 3,750,000 tons a year for 20 years to haul it all away.
Chat is more than eyesore, it's a source of contamination, litigation and distress. Chat is laced with lead, zinc, cadmium and other metals and has been used as gravel throughout the area and sold for use in road construction, parking lots and home foundations.
In 1994, an Indian Health Service sampling of area Quapaw children found 35 percent had blood lead levels above the federal threshold for excessive exposure. The Environmental Protection Agency began remedial action in 1996, removing and replacing soil in lead-contaminated yards. In 1997, tests on other children in the Tar Creek area revealed hazardous lead levels in one child out of four children.
Lead was found in the soil and in household dust. Lawsuits were filed to determine who owns the chat and who should pay to clean it up.
In 1997, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a potentially responsible party named in cleanup litigation, recognizing a liability, imposed a moratorium on the sale of Indian-owned chat. Sixty to 80 percent of the chat is on Quapaw tribal lands and held in trust by the BIA. In the meantime, the EPA developed a chat use policy and continued to allow the sale and distribution of non-Indian owned chat. However, those guidelines for safe and acceptable use weren't enforced until June 1, 2000. The moratorium on the sale of Indian-owned chat was lifted in August 2001.
Prior to enforcement, chat was sold to whomever wanted it. Now sales are commercial, going mainly to construction contractors, an industry that is educated regarding the potential risks and hazards of using material that contains lead and other heavy metals.
"It's the fine particles of chat that contain the most heavy metals, said Mary Jane Calvey, the Environmental Program manager for the Tar Creek area with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality. It is mostly gravel that is sold.
Calvey also explained that "some of the piles really don't have a lot of lead or zinc in them because they've been re-milled several times. Some other ones have higher levels. Even within a pile you may have some variability because all of the material may not have come from the same original sites."
That variability is what worries Rebecca Jim of the local environmental group - Local Environmental Action Demanded. She has concerns that some of the chat being sold does contain harmful levels of lead and since the sales aren't tracked, there is no way of knowing how far possible contamination is being spread.
"We have assurances from chat sellers that they are selling it for appropriate uses," Calvey said. She admits that it is possible the chat can be misused, but she "certainly hopes not."
Chat has been used extensively throughout the area to build up low spots and as road bedding. Trucks hauling chat away from the sites leave billowing clouds of dust in their wake, some possibly skimmed from under the covering over their load, most from the gravel road they travel. Contamination from dust is a concern of many area residents.
Sam Coleman, director for Superfund EPA Region 6, was the first panelist to speak at the recent sixth annual National Conference on Tar Creek in Miami, Okla. He reminded his audience that "all the pollution that plagues Tar Creek happened over an extensive period of time" in response to the implication that the EPA wasn't doing enough. He said that more than 2,000 yards had been re-mediated since 1996. However, some residents expressed concerns that blown dust from the many chat piles and gravel roads re-contaminate the cleaned properties.
Phillip Johnson, a 40-year Pitcher resident, was sitting in the back with his portable oxygen tank in tow.
"My yard was re-mediated, and it's already contaminated again," he said.
Johnson believes that dust blown from surrounding chat piles contributes to the contamination.
"We have a sampling program where we are continuing to sample and test yards," Coleman said. "At this time, we have no proof that airborne dust from chat is responsible for contaminating yards."
However, a report published by the EPA in January states "lead contaminated soils and chat piles are a source of exposure to the population, especially to young children the percentage of children with elevated blood levels remain well above state and national averages."
"Why don't they just put it [the chat] back in the ground?" asked Tulsa resident Rebecca Ford.
The viability of using chat as fill material in mine shafts is still being debated. In Keating's report, the mine shaft subcommittee determined that "economic and environmental factors will ultimately determine if some of the chat will be used for this purpose. The Department of Environmental Quality will determine chat use guidelines based on a risk assessment of its use as a fill material."
The risks were in the leaching of metals from the chat into the soil and groundwater so a test was required to measure the extent of possible additional contamination. To address this issue, the DEQ began working with the Oklahoma Conservation Commission on a project to fill a sinkhole using chat that has little or no sale value due to the water content. The Conservation Commission did all the planning and oversight of the project, which took 90 days to complete once work began last summer. Using aerial photography to identify possible locations for their experiment, the commission sought a property that contained mine shafts and sinkholes. They chose the McNeeley farm, a private property located on East 20 Road, a heavily traveled road in eastern Ottawa County. The U.S. Geological Survey aided in sampling the water in the sinkhole before any action was taken to test contamination levels. After remediation, a well was drilled to enable continued monitoring of the water quality. The soil was treated with turkey manure and phosphates in accordance with agricultural guidelines, and cool weather grasses were seeded.
Today, grass is growing, and that encourages Calvey. The DEQ is monitoring the property and hopes to have comprehensive results available this fall, but so far, what they have found is promising.
"When you go below the base of the chat pile, just a few inches, you actually encounter soil that is close to background what happens is the lead and the zinc and any other of the heavy metals have an affinity to clay. It really doesn't leach down, it just kind of stays in the top couple of inches," Calvey said.
Fifteen million dollars was made available this year to perform a number of projects. Right now, the EPA is conducting an assessment of all the chat piles and mill ponds that are concentrated in the center of the Superfund site. Their main objective, Calvey said, is determining what needs to be done and developing a plan to accomplish it.
The DEQ is working cooperatively on areas outside of those being addressed by the EPA. The problems aren't as severe, but still need work done.
"As a part of the Oklahoma Plan for Tar Creek, Senator Inhofe, through the Environment and Public Works subcommittee, got some congressional appropriations directly for this," Calvey said.
"By taking this money and selectively going in, we can take a whole area like Commerce and take care of all the mining related issues that are there. We'll fill in some sink holes, reclaim some property, treat some seeps, then that part of Commerce can get on with their economic development. It doesn't mean we don't care about the other portions, we do care very much we are [just] going to bite off chunks we can chew and show that it can be done and give people some encouragement that yes, someday their site can look like [the McNeeley site] too."
