EuTuCroquet?
“What's happening to my special purpose!?”
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2017
- Messages
- 5,402
- Reaction score
- 8,716
Why is it now covered by swamp? Is it covered by water from the tailing ponds? Don't mining companies have to restore the land?
Heres a 2015 investigative piece about where all the toxic water is still coming from.
https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahom...ing-up-one-of-oklahomas-most-polluted-places/
From the link:
Water pollution is a long-term hazard at Tar Creek. Runoff from the chat piles picks up harmful metals and leeches into the soil, where it can affect various water sources.
But contaminated groundwater poses a longer term hazard, Nairn says. When the lead and zinc mines were abandoned and their pumps switched off, the caverns filled with water that soaked up harmful metals.
(Photo: Acidic, toxic mine water flows between the baseball field and football field at the high school in Commerce, Okla.)
All of these discharges contained elevated iron. Thats the orange color that everybody sees, says Nairn. But what they dont see are elevated zinc, cadmium, lead, arsenic.
Roughly 32 billion gallons of toxic mine water a small lakes worth is steadily gurgling to the surface and flowing into streams and creeks. The toxic spring could flow for centuries, Nairn says.