video. feed. of your. life. this is our top stories tonight volunteer ressa taking place in new york where a massive demo is underway with police reportedly using sound cannon against the protesters thousands of activists and for the streets to mark two months of occupy rallies. russia says syria's leaders and the opposition of the only ones who can end the country's lethal violence is beginning to look like a civil war that's as arab states reportedly paid to leave the club to see how against america's leading role in libya. and fresh protests spread across italy

and greece which are among the economies worst hit by the e.u. crisis comes a warning to the two country's new prime ministers who plan to pull the nation's out of financial turmoil with yet more. although many of us enjoy the high tech gadgets the modern world provides they do come at a price of course certainly for oklahoma where the fragile ecology has been decimated by the pursuit of metal and it's the subject of our special report next. here a lot of. mine discharges are coming. right at the. i. and you can tell that when the new red water mixes with the clear water that's the difference. although this looks weird stuff still got a lot of metals in it because it's fifty charging out of a chat. the sides of the mine has the minerals and it are submerged beneath the

water and it's isolated from oxygen oxygen it became. there back when they first go on up there was a lot of oxygen available in the mines and that was causing oxidation of metals which in turn creates a screw sulfur so if you're casting you have torque free which starts up in kansas runs through the mining bill becomes contaminated at their house that which is just south of picher and then runs on the east side of commerce runs through the center of miami only into new yoshio river. i want to into green light let's just say it's been doing that since a nothing but orange yucky smelly until. this

watershed has been clocking five million gallons a day since there have been clocks and if water rolls into the mines or slides off the chap pilot flows out from the underground it's real bad news. isaac newton says the reaction to the mining is a life time polluted water. and this mine systems well as any ground water hole and then coughs up one flood. and a look at these problems and say this has been here for a long time. it's not just twenty five years in superfund it's been since money. and we all benefit from that money either directly or indirectly. it was a good thing and you know it's but this is the legacy we're kind of an obligation to fix. if you drive through picher right now and drive down the road nothing's changed nothing is really chaves that they put us all the n.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 the form 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 drive down the road it looks the same as it did when they turned off the pumps and they walked away 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 and a horrible water all this mine waste direct danger to children they couldn't get

the help they need it should have been easy to put a buyout together whether it's a dioxin scare they want to build a lake or highway somewhere buyouts out and all the time and human health dangers here seem to qualify plus starkey graydon's had an ace in the hole oklahoma senior senator jim inhofe chair of the environmental and public works committee in the senate this committee over seas and directs the e.p.a. and inhofe oversaw the committee as far as environmental buyout money goes in half was the faucet 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 i could also know what he was going to the problem was that inhofe is a soldier industry. fact is inhouse brother even used to work for the insurance agency owned by the mining companies inhofe is indeed 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 they could get expensive so they

just pay enough to make this buyout talk disappear and the citizens that stay but to 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 they pulled it together he was going to move all the check they were in the math on the planet same day it was released if you are in fifty trucks a day all day he would take forty years just to move the check forty years moving the chair will cost two hundred twenty five million not eighteen to complete by i was estimated at fifty million and everyone knows inhofe not much of a science now 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 a new the not even enough to explain if you got away from

mining we. didn't hear a new movies or anything but it was always a problem and i just said. a minute surprised. pitcher isn't just a little feeling. they looked water and i looked at last. all the trouble is they forgot to look at science risk which is of course the undermining because along with hard rock mining you know it turns out that there is significant on your mind which really shouldn't be a surprise to anybody since they took out i don't know two hundred fifty million tons or maybe more you know this underground mining was done sometimes clear up the worley so what if they saw a tree roots. when you have a several hundred foot mine room that's going almost to the surface guess what it's going to collapse on these days and that's why and that you're seeing out there

it's all undermined in pitcher and cardinal more people are live and they could wake up one day in the house could be collapsed in the morning. they think what they've done to the city pitcher is just segment billers you know i think they took pictures. oh medium sized cave in now this is media. this is a sunflower it was the biggest cave in and the area that's a field right here was probably almost another hundred fifty 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 of them i mean if. there's just no forgiveness if anything happens around that. if you start going down that is your history. it sounds crazy but those holes are actually a blessing and state 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 on and off finally agreed to a study to prove the extent the undermining. not that 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 when it was a material chance to get a buyout so nobody feeds this two million dollar study you can't ignore the bed or what the data shows in regards to surveyor to underground mining

that was done up here you can dispute it in any way. as we were able to get political support to evaluate their risk when it became obvious that people should live their lives the best for in the long run because i don't worry about any more kids been raised in this environment you know we got to put in you know that what we are doing is we are going in finding comparables outside the project area. and he didn't keep in mind superfund site is a bigger area and a project where the project area is that area that i told you about a forty square mile area that was in that subsidence teen study they're finding properties outside that area and then giving them comparable value for their property the trust has tried to make some provisions to make sure that everybody gets a minimal decent level of housing so in other words if you live in a such

a standard housing we don't want to give you just enough money to go live in some senior housing and i am are somewhere else people get an appraisal and i don't care if you live in a five hundred thousand dollars house in appraisal and you know 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 sign on the front yard how much do you really think you're going to get for that house kind of interesting and so busy trying to do the appraisal issues and those kind of things to get people out what are very first values i mean that's hard and. like with any appraisal not everybody is happy with their praise but. it's that it's a chance for these people that they really would never have otherwise i'm not serious for my life fast here because had i feel like i got maybe a year each of years you know maybe not even had septic god but yes i got it but

not right i hate to move and you know margaret you. stefan it wasn't pictures so. good to have to get rid of. different things that's about it just be nice to have had my chance you know i'm very i'm not exactly carefree and it's a hard you know so. yeah they much but it's home and it's got to be hard leaving home practically being made to leave this place is artist on their health and their children so it's gone are the property values but it's still home and once the bio reaches critical mass there won't be any more fire department anymore polies anymore like tricity or water stores it'll just be paved country lined with rusted street signs and

when you go through all that and are told the one place you can't leave his home you deserve a by a process that is dignified and clean so the trust was appointed to represent the citizens during the buyout process they carry out orders from the federal government and all the 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 business and there's no way that you can deal and many stories i know it's not gigantic it's just forty buildings and they use nice i've got the moment you go 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 my arm and wife is for eighty thousand dollars is impossible. hundred thousand be fair yes and i don't think i can actually go to my man replies of one hundred two. and i went through all of the trying to find out

why they said well that's just what we're part of that appraiser have been in business for twenty five years they should know what they're doing. i live their lives i know. the appraisal company cinnabar services out of tulsa is doing shoddy work and the trust is painted 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 say can i say i listened and want you guys listen we have people want to say this is not like the first by a well we did the same things we put something out for bid we hired a contractor we have gone and and gotten their praises and we've had them review i mean and on estate values are higher in this buyout than they were in the first one and what do you see in the news record here's today's news record trust

the fans buy out approach the trust is circling the wagons you know the truest is supposed to take care of these people and they're not doing hard they're going to be people who feel like they were do more yes what i can to share with you is that there's been no conspiracy on the part of 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 canals brother this is again a hard. gray have this flap sliding hundred fifteen thousand. and there have also. been a very terrible probably. ok this has also left long

messy and say rebates and i've been offered seventy thousand cinnabar said there is something wrong with the beats appraisal so they use a trance why did you not tell me we did it we asked for your big really big but you didn't raise that as it means we get you both we get worse and i over there standing around with the leads are praising also listening to the same and. i don't want that mean we got to read it properly if it significator that. market like you mean tell me you didn't find anything around. thank you. the appraisers 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 but you know missing sammy's house

is the same size as the hearts missing sami's is much newer and even if you're blind and a little crazy and think these homes 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 horse too much i mean we made a mistake. and in the same breath or anything missing sammy got a good run down dollar if here is not a hollywood story and where does this leave those who've already worked a lifetime. person ok ok back to chapter eleven and ninety two years old and i said to them it. jackie britt see if she calls me the of the day she's so worried about hoover she's that no one she's got not neighbors run across streets

all she's got and she don't know about her house since they offered two hundred two thousand not in it i think she said tell me so i don't want rushing squander. 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 there she says gentleman the purpose of this letter is to explain why i do not have a bill of sale i was twenty one i bought my home in picher oklahoma in the fall of one thousand forty three from three fields for three hundred seventy five dollars i've lived here for almost sixty three years and 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 but 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 the house for sixty years and is on a fixed. how do you expect her to move out of the superfund site on twenty thousand dollars an hour you know it's easy for us solders kamiya look at asco my gosh your house in worth five thousand dollars that's right but that's at 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 to get out of here and the funny thing is we can come in here and spend seventy thousand dollars to dig up her

yard but we can't give her enough money to move out of town. when he she was not only across 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 except your offer he looked at and these folks have been stolen from their land raped their names drug through the mud but they are tough as hell break everything else you can grab but these people ain't breaking on your science on your say so on your legislation of the month hell yes they get red headed mouthy when things seem counterfeit what else do you have and there ain't much. just your word or so and you're back. one hundred years later they're still here still fighting for their health and their cool spite of their. weather is fair

weather and they are going this will not be home anymore. and a hundred years after the first pickaxe struck oklahoma go there ending this place back to the quapaw appreciate your here's the worst superfund site in the country. girl group has even started. we don't disclose the buyouts we want doesn't need to go over just the way 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 you can see that with all this mine why it's covering my aunt's cape it's really not usable in the sixty's eagle pitcher was prissy for to get out of there and lisa's you into a movie also offered to cook. back in the nonce. and the

department of interior the night stated that there. were no longer really good for anything they were for agriculture or other purpose the only economic derivative left. with the gravel surface and they could sell their ground when they started realizing that heavy metals it was was an environmental hazard. part of interior realized that that's a liability since they manage the asset for the try and pay allowed that to be so and they would incur liability because if this chat were sold and put somewhere else that place might become a stick with one site they're looking there's so little left today there's no telling what the epidemic would look like if there are five times as much lead poaching their young polluting creeks are making the ground channel but eighty

years later there's it's seventy five million times eighty years of kids passing through struggling in school. here gone this chad didn't just heard the kids who tested i. read was here in mountains before anyone drowning test. so not only is the chad left on the indian elise where the tribal member can't use the land then they found out they couldn't sell it either so their land became useless as a result was cats and just sitting here for eighty nine hundred years you know we're being restricted for more sales but the money indians are not this check causes lead poisoning that's not an opinion it ruins this very land that was given to the quality of place what they gave up in the b. i made sure this chat stayed right here the b.a.

said these are the people who are going to bleed 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 land was to replace the land where they came from you know the quapaw try occupied most of what is now arkansas. you know and i feel bad for the people that are living over pitcher. i feel bad that that they're going to have to move i feel bad that they're going to have to be relocated but you know what couples didn't want to leave or cancel. 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 foer here and you know where are the birds were 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. i think the worst story would have to be.

so we're story which is typical of the kids we let slip through the critics. the kids that. didn't get any help early on. because if you look back and. look back in school history if you talk to families. those problems were here. and we didn't talk. 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 way 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 that 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 try to lead by uranium or oil before there's no more country. hello. larry.

can. keep.