Wasting Away Again in Tar Creek

February 07, 2008

 

 

By JERRY WOFFORD

Source: Freelance Contributor,

 

PICHER — When Whitney Diveley was a kid in this town, the 200-foot-tall piles of lead-tainted mine waste were a fun Saturday afternoon.

 

“When we were kids, we’d go climb on chat piles,” said Diveley, a former OU student who lives in Commerce, a town about five miles southwest of Picher, near the Kansas border. “We knew there was lead, but we didn’t think about it.”

 

These piles, called chat, which look like mountains of cream-colored gravel, and the area around them are also referred to as the Tar Creek Superfund Site on the National Priorities List of Superfund Sites, an Environmental Protection Agency list of some of the most polluted places in the nation.

It earned this distinction in 1983, when the EPA placed Tar Creek on the list, which was designed to fund cleanups of environmental disasters in the United States .

 

Since then, OU and other state and federal agencies have joined the fight to reclaim the land for safe use.

 

OU is finding ways to safely use the EPA estimated 50 million cubic yards of chat and is constructing water treatment facilities in the area, to be completed this spring.

 

There are currently 1,305 Superfund Sites in the U.S. and 11 in Oklahoma. Tar Creek is the worst in Oklahoma and in the nation’s top 50.

 

“People need to understand it’s the biggest environmental cleanup project in the state of Oklahoma, and it’s a big one in the nation, too,” said Kelly Dixon, environmental programs manager with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.

 

OU researchers on the job

In 2003, OU researchers along with state officials decided they wanted to show residents that there are practical, long-term solutions to Tar Creek.

“The idea was to demonstrate some of these technologies,” said Robert Nairn, principal investigator on two of the projects in the Oklahoma Plan for Tar Creek and associate professor in the school of civil engineering and environmental science. “We can do some things now to show some environmental improvement.”

 

Dixon said people in the area were tired of studies and wanted to see things change.

 

“It was sort of a way to bypass the federal process and the enforcement with the [mining] companies,” she said. “It was a parallel approach to the site that was going to get results quicker.”

 

The Oklahoma Plan for Tar Creek was introduced in January 2004 and OU researchers began their work during fall of that year.

 

Dixon said the Oklahoma Plan focuses on the perimeter of Picher, addressing environmental concerns around Picher.

 

“If we could attack the perimeter and shrink the size, we’d be that much better off,” Dixon said.

 

Nairn said OU’s work is focused on three aspects: building a passive water treatment facility to clean the metals out of the streams and groundwater, an affective way to use the chat as a clean aggregate for asphalt and monitoring the water and ecological conditions.

 

Cleaning what couldn’t be cleaned

Nairn is the principal investigator on the passive water treatment facility and the stream monitoring.

 

In January, the OU Board of Regents approved $700,000 in new funding for Phase II of the construction of the passive treatment system. The total amount approved by the regents since the beginning of the project is $1.2 million.

 

A passive water treatment system is a way to clean water without using much energy or large building complexes, Nairn said.

 

“Passive idea is just what it sounds like,” Nairn said. “You’re going to build a system that doesn’t require that sort of regular intensive operation and maintenance.”

 

The alternative is an active water treatment center, much like municipal water treatment facilities that require “24/7 operation and maintenance,” Nairn said.

 

Contaminated water enters the passive water treatment facility and passes through several ponds. Each pond has a specific function, such as removing the iron, Nairn said.

 

“By the time that water gets out of the system at the tail end, the metal concentrations have decreased and will discharge much cleaner water to the stream,” Nairn said. “Once they’re built, they look like a pond.”

 

The EPA’s final decision on the first specific cleanup project in the 1980s, called Operable Unit 1, stated the streams could not be cleaned, but Nairn said he didn’t believe it.

 

“It was determined 25 years ago that the streams were irreparably damaged,” Nairn said. “That’s one of the reasons we got involved up there because that’s not true.”

 

Shrinking the piles

The chat piles present a large set of problems for everyone in the area, Dixon said.

 

“[The EPA was] trying to attack the worst first,” Dixon said. “I think the volume of the chat piles is so daunting and intimidating, that wasn’t the initial focus.”

 

Nairn said even if the groundwater was clean, the runoff from the chat piles still contaminates the water.

 

To help that problem, OU research has shown that all of the chat can be used as an aggregate, which helps hold the asphalt together.

 

“The highest concentrations [of metals] are in the finest material,” Nairn said. “What we did was take all of it and incorporate even the [smallest] into the asphalt.”

 

When the chat is in the asphalt, it holds the metals, keeping them from seeping into the ground, Nairn said.

 

“When we do that, all the asphalt meets the regulatory criteria,” Nairn said. “It doesn’t leech the metals.”

 

Dixon said that, because of the volume of chat in the site, however, cleanup will take decades.

 

“There’s so much material there, it could take up to 20 years for the material to be used in roads,” Dixon said.

 

Though the piles still loom, Diveley said they are shrinking.

 

“Piles are shrinking because people are removing the chat,” she said.

After 25 years on the Superfund list, the Tar Creek situation is still a problem that won’t disappear overnight, Nairn said.

 

“It took a long time to make the problems. We’re not going to solve them tomorrow,” Nairn said. “But this is the first step. Let’s demonstrate what we can do now, and hopefully down the road here, we’re going to see big changes.”

 

What is 50 million cubic yards of chat?

 

The EPA estimates that 50 million cubic yards of chat exist in the Tar Creek Superfund Site.

 

• 1,562,500 dump trucks

• 107,735,401,860 cans of beer

• If piled on Owen Field, the chat would climb 5.36 miles

Column: Politics needs to get back to the basics

May 07, 2008

 

 

By PATRICK MOLNAR

 

Source: Mustang Daily, Cal Poly

 

For the past few weeks, the national dialogue in this country has been a delusion. People have been talking about pastors, patriotism and elitism while ignoring the critical issues facing this country, such as the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the deteriorating U.S. economy.

 

To be fair, I understand why certain groups (namely Republicans and the 24-hour news businesses) would prefer to divert attention toward Rev. Jeremiah Wright rather than focusing on the catastrophes they helped create.

 

Nevertheless, when I read that April was the deadliest month in Iraq in more than seven months, I am reminded of Sagan’s quote and the need to break this delusional debate. Ultimately, if we are to thrive as a nation, we cannot become immersed in side spectacles while ignoring the realities around us. We need to get back to discussing solutions to our problems, something this column will try to do regarding the Iraq war.

 

May 1 marked the five-year anniversary of the president’s “Mission Accomplished” speech about Iraq; that same day, two suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi wedding ceremony, killing 35 people and wounding 67. The sad truth is, despite heavily investing U.S. blood and treasure, our nebulous mission in Iraq is far from accomplished. But the deaths of 50 U.S. soldiers and more than 1,000 Iraqis in April alone disproves claims of “progress.”

 

Furthermore, Gen. David Petraeus’s testimony last month gave little hope to the notion of “progress” in Iraq when he said, “We haven’t turned any corners. We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.” Looking back, it is clear that the “peace” that existed in Iraq recently was not due to political progress or the “surge,” but mainly because of the whims of radical cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, who decided on a temporary ceasefire that has since expired.

In fact, Iraq continues to be governed more and more by ethnic militia groups that roam around the country, wiping out rival factions and innocent civilians. These sectarian groups operate unchecked because Iraq’s central government is weak and corrupt, and U.S. troops are too overextended to play the role of police (the actual Iraqi police force has been infiltrated by militia members). Furthermore, massive unemployment and crumbling infrastructure continue to feed the ranks of these militias and criminal gangs.

 

So what is the solution to all this? First we must accept the reality that there are no good options left (that ship has long since sailed) and that only Iraqis can achieve political reconciliation among themselves (it is their country after all, right?). With those two assumptions, the “least worst option” for Iraq is to adopt Sen. Joseph Biden’s plan, which received tremendous bipartisan support and was passed overwhelmingly in the Senate last September (75-23). Naturally, the Bush administration opposed the idea.

 

Sen. Biden’s plan calls for decentralizing political power in Iraq and allocating it among three self-governing federated regions: Kurd, Shiite and Sunni, which should mitigate the power struggle engulfing the country. The central government would be left in charge of common interests such as border security and the distribution of oil revenues, but the individual regions would be largely autonomous from one another in their day-to-day operations.

 

Although decentralization might seem radical, it really is not, as Iraq’s constitution allows for the creation of federal regions. Furthermore, Biden’s plan brings angry Sunni factions (once the ruling minority of Iraq) into the deal by guaranteeing them a proportional share of oil revenue (several billions of dollars). Each group would have an incentive to maximize oil production, making, as Biden says, “oil the glue that binds the country together.”

 

Some critics argue that this plan is a partition of the country, but the truth is that things are already heading that way because of the current massive ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods. By dividing the land along ethnic lines, it dramatically reduces the bloodshed by literally putting space between each group, allowing them to govern their own people as they see fit, as opposed to following a central government that is constantly in disagreement over regional policy.

 

If this plan sounds familiar, it’s because it has been successfully adopted in other violent sectarian regions, the most recent being Bosnia in 1995.

 

Thirteen years ago, Bosnia was being torn apart by ethnic cleansing and civil war amongst a handful of ethno-religious groups. The U.S. eventually stepped in to keep the country whole by paradoxically dividing it into ethnic federations amongst the Muslims, Croats and Serbs. Now, more than a decade later, a fragile peace still holds.

Pacifism

By GRAEME LAWSON

 I had words today with a pacifist. I am not a pacifist. He was telling me that the world’s problems would be gone if there was no violence, and I contemplated this for a while. The statement is no more preposterous than the puritan idea of a perfect enclave set in the old USA.

It is a wonderful feeling to think of such a blissful utopia as possible. However, it is not so we are forced to think of the facts that actually surround the issue. Man had a tendency toward violence. This is undeniable and inescapable.

War is a necessary tool of peace. Some general once said that, when looking for peace, a nation must prepare for war, and this is true. To protect our way of life from those that wish to do us harm, and there will always be those that wish to do us harm, we must be prepared to strike quickly and efficiently to suppress the enemy that comes.

As people, combat has existed for many, many thousands of years, and we will never escape the pain that comes with it.

Like communism, Pacifism is an ideal associated to the principle that people will be willing to drop their way of life. This will not be.

As a society dependent on resources, we will fight for the control of them in an attempt to take them for ourselves. Essentially, what it breaks down to is that greed is the number one factor in the existence of humanity and society. 

As humans, it is our innate tendency to take what it is that we need. And as humans we need to realize that the pain and suffering that is real amongst us will not go away with the invention of an ideal that professes non violence. 

Generation X

GRAEME LAWSON

I was watching a music video today by a very politically inclined band, and I came to a startling conclusion about the overall standpoint of my generation. I have noticed that we are very much the “yes generation.”

 

To explain this, I will have to explain the history of the generation that precedes my own, known as “generation X.” This was a generation of profound social reform in terms of so many different aspects of society.

 

Generation X managed to do away with the social oppression of black people and their amazing leaps on a technological level which in turn led to a more stable world economy.

 

Now I coined the term “Generation Yes” to talk of my own generation because the word yes is the one my generation uses when we are told to accept something. We do what we are told. We are merely content to sit on the laurels of our elders and that is what we are taught to do.

 

Don’t complain or change anything because we have built you the perfect system — all of this in spite of the repetition in history that we see when just one generation becomes stagnant like ours. Millions of Jews were killed because Hitler had a population of people that were willing to listen to anything, and that is what is being slowly bred today. We sit back and watch the world turn on the rusted and broken cogs that somehow manage to keep on working. Our own image that will be jotted down in books form now till the end of time is one of a generation that’s imply sat down and took what we were told at face value.

 

The world does not get any better if we simply sit by and watch some of the outdated practices of the time before us do their work. The way to making society better is to change, but because of the way we are now taught, change is not something that is accepted.

Schools Out!!!

By NOEL SHABAN

 

Although I am happy about school being over, I am not overjoyed about having to move out. I had no idea how much stuff I had in my room.

Piles and piles of stuff. Clothes….. oh my goodness how did u get so many clothes?

And shoes? Wow, drawers full of them.

Food, I have no idea how I accumulated the food that is in my room. I started out with a few boxes of a college student’s best friend … ramen noodles, then cereal, Little Debbie’s, soup and crackers, granola and trail mix, and tons of candy.

Cleaning out my room and sorting out my belongings shows me how much of a pack rat I am! While cleaning, I got rid of three heavy duty trash bags full of trash and three full of clothes, shoes, purses etc. My new resolution is to not buy something I will wear only once, and to not buy more than I can eat, and to not keep papers that have no purpose.

Hopefully, if I stick to my guns, my new life style will be more organized and will even save me some money, which is something we could all use.

Now that I have moved out, I have vowed to never return to that old life style and I’m anxious to see how long my new life style lasts.

Addiction

May 7, 2008

 

Graeme Lawson

Addiction

 

 

     In the world today, it is very easy to fall into habits that one may find morally reprehensible. To the extreme of this, we find such things as illegal narcotics, alcohol, and cigarettes, but I hope to concentrate on the other end of the spectrum, encompassing such things as skipping class, or perhaps a tendency to leave assignments to the last minute. Whilst it can be argued that these neglectful behaviors are certainly not addictions, many people will tell you that often, they can be just as hard to quit. People can go to rehab or alcoholics anonymous meetings to help them through extreme addictions, but have you ever seen a clinic helping people overcome apathy or procrastination? Granted these may not kill you, but they can ruin your life fairly well given that the basics of education are founded on the principle of hard work and a tenacity to keep on top of your workload. Considering it from this perspective, procrastination and apathy can be more lethal than marijuana has the potential to be.

     They say that a person can relieve themselves of a bad habit by acting in the opposite of the said action 21 times. How does one combat something consistent in a manner that implies counting occurrences when the subject’s life is seemingly one occurrence? We find sometimes that a good way to combat this apathy is to assign personal values to the work that we should be doing. If a subject has personal meaning to the person doing it, then this person will most likely be more adept at identifying with the material and completing it in a timely manner.

     Whilst it may be true that a bad habit can be cured by contradicting it 21 times in a row, this does not work in the ways of procrastination or apathy. We must find that special something that makes a subject personally important to us and in so doing make our work ethic reflect that importance in a positive light.