which crisis if you move the song from plans to transition. starts on t.v. dot com. it's time these are the top stories flashbacks to iraq said experts that claim baghdad had weapons of mass destruction now and suggestions that around this developing a nuclear bomb. also headlining from us the only regime free syrian army reportedly stages a major assault on a moralist base near the capital damascus but says the arab league ratchets up the pressure on president assad despite his pledge to reform. passed out but not doubt a string of victuals apparently called protesters by police across the u.s.

failed to stop the movement from gearing up to show that people are still. coming right up a special report for you on how the relentless pursuit of mekele production is poisoning parts of oklahoma and causing a potential environmental disaster. we're right at the eight hundred foot elevation. a lot of. mine discharges are coming out. right at eight hundred foot. i. mean you can tell that one of the red water mixes with a clear water that's the difference. although this looks clear it's still got a lot of metals in it because it's discharging out of the chaff. the sides of the mine has the minerals that are submerged beneath the water and it's isolated from oxygen oxygen is the key. there back when they were first going up there was

a lot of oxygen available in the mines and that was causing oxidation of the mantle which in turn creates space crew sulfur so if you're a task you have torque. which starts up in keenan's as runs through the mining bill becomes contaminated down that which is just south of picher it then rooms on the east side of commerce runs through the center of my own engine the osho river. on into green light let's just say it's been doing this since eighty three nothing but orange yucky smelly container. this watershed has been clocking five million gallons a day since there have been clocks. and water rolls into the mines or slides off the chap pilot flows out from the underground is real bad news. isaac newton says

the reaction to the mining is a lifetime polluted water. and it's my system swallows in the ground water hole in the coughs up one's blood. and you look at these problems and say this is been here for a long time. it's not just twenty five years of superfund it's it's since money. and we all benefited from that money either directly or indirectly. it was a good thing for the united states but this is the legacy. kind of obligation to fix. if you drive through picher right now and drive down the road nothing's changed nothing is really change so. they put us on the m.p.l. list it's a disgrace and it's sad. but no one has done anything about the water. but i'm ashamed right now there are no protection

agency the bureau of indian affairs with a part of the interior because they've spent all this time talking to us telling us you know what they think we want to hear but if you drive through picher and you drive down doubtful road it looks the same as it did with it turned off the pope's of the waterway no one cares about the people that live there this is not a safe place to live it's a good place there's good people here and it's not fit they've been whispers about buying this place out since it was named superfund in eighty three i mean horrible water all this mine waste direct danger to children if they can get the help they need it should have been easier to put a buyout together whether it's a dioxin scare they want to build a lake or highway somewhere buyouts happen all the time and human health dangers here seem to qualify plus starkey grad instead an ace in the hole oklahoma senior

senator jim inhofe is chair of the environmental and public works committee in the senate this committee over seas and directs the e.p.a. and awful oversaw the committee as far as environmental buyout money goes in half was the faucet and you have a place like this in your home state you're carrying the kind of committee that can actually help people and you refuse well we can also know what he was going to the problem was that in office a soldier of industry. fact is inhouse brother even used to work for the insurance agency owned by the mining companies in office in deal with polluters so he can't just order a buyout because that would prove this land is not fit for people and it's not fit and someone's got to pay for what got done and that could get expensive so they just pay him hop to make his buyout talk disappear and the citizens that stay with the prove that he was working for auto walk county folks he put together an eighteen million dollar cleanup plan to stand in for

a buyout made everyone wait three years while he pulled it together he was going to move all the chatter they were in the math on the planet same day was released if you're in fifty trucks a day all day he would take forty years just to move the check forty years doing the chair will cost two hundred twenty five million not eighteen but complete by i was estimated at fifty million and everyone knows inhofe not much of a science man could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the american people i believe in his but it turned out he wasn't a math guy either i think came news that not even enough can spin if you go away from. i didn't hear a new noise or anything. else always a pup i'm going to just said. and i surprised.

pitcher isn't just a little feeling and they looked at water and i looked at lad and all the trouble is they forgot to look at subsidence risk which is of course the undermining because along with hard rock mining you know it turns out that there are a significant other mark which really shouldn't be a surprise to anybody since they took out i don't know two hundred fifty million tons of or maybe more you know this underground mining was done sometimes clear up to where they were till they saw a tree roots. when you have a several hundred foot my room it's going almost to the surface guess what it's going to collapse on these days and that land that you're seeing out there it's all undermined and pitcher and cardinal more people are live and they could wake up one day in the house that they collapsed and almost.

they don't care what they've done to the city. it's just settlement builders you know. i think they took it was. already inside pay then yeah this is media. this is a sunflower it was the biggest cave in in the area that your field right here was probably almost another hundred twenty foot deeper than what the water is right now . but i think there is a public policy issue here. if you can account for all the risk and environmental side should be in charge well i've been around these my whole life and i'm still scared i mean there's just there's just no forgiveness if anything happens around it. if you start going down it's your history.

it sounds crazy but those holes are actually a blessing and stay can afford to move everyone out and often already pounded his gavel that the current problems weren't bad enough so things had to get worse to get anything done. several areas collapse that summer in off finally agreed to a study to prove the extent the undermining. not the need to be proven another study felt exhausting you know it felt tired to have to prove that the land was actually undermined and more holes were coming but it was a material chance to get a buy out so nobody feeds this two million dollar study. you can't ignore the there or what the data shows in regards to the severity of the underground mining that was done up here and cannot dispute it in any way as we were able to get political support to evaluate their risk then it became

obvious that people should live where it's best for in the long run because they have to worry about anymore kids being raised in the us and our. you know we've got to put an end to that what we are doing is we are going in finding comparables outside the projects area. and you can keep in mind superfund site is a bigger area in the project area project area is that area that i told you about the forty square mile area that was in that subsidence chain study they're finding properties outside that area and then giving them comparable value for their property the trust house tried to make some provisions to make sure that everybody gets a minimal level of housing so in other words if you live in a in some standard housing we don't want to give you just enough money to go live in some senior housing in my arm or somewhere else people get an appraisal and and i don't care if you live in a five hundred thousand dollars house or going to brazil and you go i really

thought my house was worth more than you know and so what i keep telling people is be realistic in reality if you took that house in the condition that it's in take it and stick it in my oklahoma one sign on the front yard how much do you really think you're going to get for that house kind of interesting we've been so busy trying to do the appraisal issues and those kind of things to get people i hope were very firm values i mean that's our plan. but with any appraisal that everybody is happy with their praise for it. it's that it's a chance for these people that they really would never have otherwise i might stay braced for my life fast here because how do i feel like i got maybe a year or two years you know maybe not even that sent their god but years i got paid. all right i hate to move you know for you

stefan send pictures to friends that you have to get ready for. different things as a moderate would be nice to have it myself you know very i'm going to go take care of her and make a hard and so. yeah a much but it's home and it's got to be hard leaving home practically being made to leave as places are just on their health and their children so it's one of the property values but it's still home and once the bio reaches critical mass there won't be any more fire department any more polies any more electricity or water stores it'll just be paved country on with rusted street signs and when you go through all that and are told the one place you can't live is home you deserve a by a process that's dignified and clean so the trust was appointed to represent the citizens during the by a process that i carry out orders from the federal government and all appraisal

issues and cut checks for the homes and i'm just making a little short statement i was offered fifteen dollars a square foot for my kids and there's no way that you can build and many stories i know it's not dark and it's just forty buildings and believe me it's nice i'm not there all the people look at it we're staying in from our house and for the base package the gunshop the house the land three lots eighty thousand dollars and there's no way you go to mom and replace this for eighty thousand dollars is impossible. hundred two thousand the fair yes and i don't think i can actually go nine and replace it for a hundred. and i went through all of trying to find out why they said well that's just what we have heard today that the person who's been in business for twenty five years they should know what they're doing. all of them were there bill. the

appraisal company cinnabar services out of tulsa is doing shoddy work and the trust is panem one point eight million dollars to do shoddy work they're rude to the people they have consistencies and the trust will not hold them accountable. to listen only second i had i listened what you guys listen we have people want to say this is not like the first by a well it essentially means we put something out for bid we hired a contractor we have gone and and gotten their appraisals and we've had that review i mean and i don't want to state a values are higher in this buyout than they were in the first one and what you see in the news record here's today's news record trust the fans buy out approach the trust is circling the wagons and you know the trust is supposed to take

care of these people and they're not doing are they're going to be people who feel like they were to more yes what i can to share with you is that there's been no conspiracy on the court anyone to get higher values for certain people now let me finish. what there is is a lot of innuendo and accusation and yet there is no proof. ok we're coming up on jenelle's brother this again hard. very have his lap siding hundred fifteen thousand. their house although no one has moved very. probably. ok this house on the left belongs to me beats and i've been offered seventy thousand cinnabar said there is something wrong with the beats appraisal so as you use

a trance why did you not tell me we did it we actually you're really big but you didn't raise that as it means we treat you just because we did great but were there something wrong we did need to praise also listening to the same and. i don't what it means we got three did. it it significator bad. markie can make it mean tell me you didn't find anything wrong. think you. need praise or probably have a tough with this town there are some poor people here there are some bad looking homes and i'm sure those create some challenges you know missing sammy's house is the same size as the hearts missing sami's as much newer and even if you're blind and a little crazy and think the songs are in similar condition and they can bedroom isn't

a bedroom if it's not close to a bathroom there's still a forty five thousand dollar difference in a town where the average home is fifty eight grand that's almost the cost of a whole other house this is the kind of appraisal work the trust hands behind and they said mrs home on her couch and say maybe we gave the hearts too much i mean we made a mistake i did before well and in the same breath the thing missing and sammy got a good run down younger if you're just not a hollywood story and where does this leave those who've already worked a lifetime and of course an ok i paid back a chapter eleven and ninety two years old. and i so i did then it. ok brad see and she called me the other day she's so worried about hoover it seems that not one she got not neighbors run across the street so she's got and she don't know about her house since they offered two hundred two thousand on it i think and she said tell me so i don't know what she's going to hear

they offered eighty four years young jackie busy twenty two thousand dollars for her home it doesn't matter what her home is like or can you move on that she says gentleman the purpose of this letter is to explain why i do not have a bill of sale when i was twenty one i bought my home in picher oklahoma in the fall of one nine hundred forty three from doing fields for three hundred seventy five dollars i've lived here for almost sixty three years now almost eighty four years old and have lived in the neighborhood seventy seven years longer as far as i know than anyone now living or dead it is with much regret that i will have to leave my home at this late time in my life and i cannot stay without police protection sewer service utilities and safe neighbors please let me be among the last to go.

how do you expect an eighty year old woman who's lived in their house for sixty years who's on a fixed income. how do you expect her to move out of the superfund site twenty thousand dollars an hour you know it's easy for outsiders to look at us you know my gosh a house in worth five thousand dollars that's right but that's a ladies home that's all she has and now you're going to take it away from er and now you've got to make her get it to get out of here and the funny thing is we come in here and spend seventy thousand dollars to dig up her yard we can you give her enough money to bring about a ten dollars. you know when he was only three he got her her is what environmental problems look like her they look like people problems

environmental problems are people problems as long as gravity still holds us here. they aren't separate you said your offer. and these folks have been stolen from their land raped their names dragged through the mud they are tough as hell break everything else you can grab that these people ain't breaking on your science on your say so on your legislation of the month hell yes they get red headed mouths when things seem counterfeit what else do you have and there ain't much. just your word your soul and your back. one hundred years later they're still here still fighting for their health and their cool spot of their. weather is fair weather again they are going this will not be home anymore. and a hundred years after the first pickaxe struck oklahoma go they're handing this

place back to the quapaw appreciate your here's the worst superfund site in the country. darkroom. we don't just because the buyouts we were on the loop over will be just all they can buy these people out which is that what they're going to do but the tribes going to be here forever because the government's not going to give them any more land but you can see that with all this mind why it's covering the landscape it's really not used in the sixty's eagle pisser was percy for them to get out of their leases to move away also offered to cook. back in the mines. and the department of interior. stated that there. were no longer really good for anything they were rooting for agriculture or

any other purpose but the only economic group who left. the gravel surface they could sell the ground when they started realizing that chad had heavy metals it was was an environmental hazard. part of interior realize that that's a liability since they manage the asset for the tribe and they allowed that to be sold and they would incur liability because if this chat were sold and put somewhere else that place might become a super fun site they're lucky there's so little left today there's no telling what they have a demick would look like if there are five times as much lead poaching their young polluting creeks are making ground channel but eighty years later there's at seventy five million tons eighty years of kids passing through struggling in school . here gone this chad didn't just started the kids who tested out. there was here

in mountains before anyone was running test. so not only has the chad left on the indian lease where the tribal member can't use the land then they found out they couldn't sell it either so their land became useless result the cats and just sitting here for eighty ninety one hundred years you know were being restricted for more sales but the money indians were not this check causes lead poisoning that's not an opinion it ruins this very land that was given to the quality replace what they gave up in the b. i made sure this chat stayed right here the v.a. said these are the people who are going to believe because of this waste and what is now so clear about this function. is that damaging the land is not a separate act from damaging a culture. the whole reason that the government gave the tribe

just one hand was to replace the land where they came from you know that the quapaw tried occupied most of what is now arkansas. you know and i feel bad for the people that are living over in picher. i feel bad that they're going to have to move i feel bad that they are going to have to be relocated but you know what the whole post in one leader could so. so. it's giving bad out here. but not saying hardly any birds squirrels you know. ducks you know i don't know what's going on here this this is like rachel carson's nightmare today you know we're having

a silent phone you know where are the birds where's the wildlife. just don't see this is really unusual i've never been on this river and seen it you can even hear a bird chirping you know. and i think the worst story would have to be. to work story would have to pick the kids we let slip through the cracks.

the kids. didn't get any help early on. because if you look back if you look back in school history and if you talk to families. those problems are here and they get. and we didn't know. hundreds of towns and cities have diminished even died when industry pulls up stakes but these towns in oklahoma began to die because industry arrived play back when it would have been impossible to know the dimension of destruction they'd be left with or who would be hurt by it back then jobs trumped everything

maybe they still do back then they had no concept of the future and now we are the heirs of our grandparents a mess and here we are about to shoot the porch light out on this town how many more times can we strike lead or uranium or oil or for there's no more country. for me.