and that was causing oxidation of the mantle which in turn creates basically sulfur so here you have tar creek which starts up in kansas runs through the mining belt becomes contaminated at douthat which is just south of picher it then rooms on the east side of commerce runs through the center of my own into in the osho river on into green light let's just say it's been doing that since eighty three nothing but orange yucky smelly containment. 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 lifetime of polluted water. and this mine system swallows any groundwater hole

and then coughs up orange blood. and he 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 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 a obligation to fix. if you drive through picher right now and drive down the road nothing's changed nothing is really. 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 or. but i'm ashamed right now of the army the protection agency the bureau of indian affairs the department the interior because they've

spent all this time talking to us telling you this you know what they think we want to hear but if you drive through picher drive down doubtful road it looks the same as when they turned off the pumps and walked. 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 but it's not fit there been whispers about buying this place out since it was named the superfund in eighty three i mean horrible water all of this mine waste direct danger to children they couldn't get the help they needed 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 stark regretted and said an ace in the hole oklahoma

senior senator jim inhofe was 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 off was the faucet and you have a place like this in your home state you're chairing the kind of committee that can actually help people and you refuse well we could all smell what he was cooking the problem was that in office a soldier of industry fact is in house brands or even used to work for the insurance agency owned by the mining companies inhofe is in deep with polluters so he can't just order a buyout because that would prove this land's not fit for people and if it's not fit and someone's got to pay for what got done and that could get expensive so they just pay and hope to make this buyout talk disappear and the citizens that stay but to prove that he was working for auto accounting 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 chat they were in the math on the planet same day it was released if you ran fifty trucks a day all day you would take forty years just to move the chair forty years moving the chair will cost two hundred twenty five million not eighteen 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 it is but it turned out he wasn't a math guy either but then came news that not even enough could spin if you got away from mining. and didn't hear new movies or anything that was always a pop and you need to settle. in on your surprised that pitcher isn't just all fairly and they looked at water and i looked at les and

all the trouble is they forgot to look at subsidence risk which is of course the undermining that goes along with hard rock mining you know it turns out that the earth is significant undermined 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 toward until they saw 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 land that you're seeing out there it's all undermined in pitcher and cardinal more people are eleven they could wake up one day in their house complete collapse in the morning. they didn't care what the dumb to that the city pitcher is just sitting on pillars

and. the pillars. oh medium sized cave in now this is mania. this is a sunflower and why it's the biggest cave in and the area that has your field right here. that's probably i will say another one hundred fifty foot deeper than what the water is right now but i think there is a public policy issue here of if you can account for all the risk and environmental side you should be in charge well i've been around these my whole life and i'm still scared of them i mean there's just. there's just no forgiveness if anything happens around these things. if you start going down that's it your history. it sounds crazy but those holes are actually

a blessing the state can afford to move everyone out and off it 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 of the undermining. not that it needed 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 dollars study you can't ignore the dead or what the data shows in regards to severity of the underground mining that was done up here you cannot dispute it in any way as we were able to get political support to evaluate their risk then it became obvious that people shouldn't live there it's best for in the

long room because not to worry about any more kids being raised in this environment . you know we we've got to put him into it what we are doing is we are going in finding comparables outside the project area. and keeping keep in mind superfund site is a bigger area than the project area project area is that area that i told you about the forty square mile area that was in that subsidence team 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 or in substandard housing we don't want to give you just enough money to go live in substandard housing in miami are somewhere else people get an appraisal and and i don't care if you live in a five hundred thousand dollars house again 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 can sign on the front yard how much do you really think you're going to get for that house kind of interest and we've been so busy trying to do the appraisal issues and those kind of things to get people out what are very firm values i mean that's hard and. like with any appraisal but everybody's happy with their phrase that. it's that it's a chance for these people that they really would never have otherwise i'd like to stay braced for my life out here because had i feel like i got maybe a year or two years you know maybe not even had septic god but years i got it but not right i hate to move you know hard for him to do stuff on the walls and pictures and get to have to get rid of the. different

things that somebody who would be nice to have a nice house you know but i'm not able to take care of her and if they hoarded him you know so. yeah they much but it's hard. and it's got to be hard leaving home practically being made to leave these places are just on their health and their children so it's one of their 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 lined 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 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 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 build and many story space and i know it's not gigantic it's just forty buildings and but it is nice i'm not alone let it 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 mom and replace this for eighty thousand dollars it's impossible. to hundred two thousand be fair yes and i don't think i can actually go to my man replace it for one hundred. and i went to all of the try to find out why they said well that's just what we're part of that their prices or have been in business for twenty five years they should know what they're doing. live below the belt the appraisal company cinnabar services out of tolls is doing

shoddy work. and the trust is paying them one point eight million dollars to do shoddy work they're rude to the people they have and consistencies and the trust will not hold them accountable. to listen now wait a second i had i listened why don't you guys listen. we have people want to say this is not like the first buyout well we did the same things we put something out for bid we hired a contractor we have gone and and gotten their appraisals and we've had them reviewed i mean and in all honesty the 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 you know the trust is supposed to take care of these people and they're not doing

it are there going to be people who feel like they were do more yes what i can to sure 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 jenelle's brother this again hard that kerry have his lap siding. hundred fifteen thousand. that house the old old old house has been moved three times probably at least eighty years. ok this house on the left a long way bates and they've been offered seventy thousand cinnabar said there is nothing wrong with the beats appraisal so i use a truss why did you not tell me we did we actually you're probably being really

really good you didn't raise that as it means we get you just because we get worse and i raise it over there standing around with the beach appraisal so let's leave it the same and. i don't want that mean we got three new property. it significant that a. marquee can link in me in tell me you didn't find anything room. 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. 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 in 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 stands behind and they said mrs home on her couch and say maybe we gave the cards too much i mean we made a mistake. and in the same breath out of the thing missy and sammy got a good run five thousand dollars. and where does this leave those who've already worked a lifetime. ok i pay back a chapter eleven and ninety two years old. and i say i did it. jackie bird see and she called me the of the day she's so worried about movement she's that moment she got not neighbors run across the street sell shoes god and she don't know about her house since they offered two hundred two thousand not in it i think because she said tell me so i don't know rush to 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 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 thousand nine hundred three from doing fields for three hundred seventy five dollars i've lived here for almost sixty three years i'm 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 has lived in that house for sixty years who is on a fixed income. how do you expect her to move out of the superfund site on twenty thousand dollars now you know it's easy for outsiders to come and look at nasa oh my gosh a house in worth five thousand dollars that's right but that's it ladies home that's all she has and now you're going to take it away from her and now you've got to make her get to get outta 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. he only crossed. her this 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 if you're over here. 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 run your legislation of the month hell yes they get red headed now they 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 spotted there. whether it's fair weather and they are gone 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. can't prove it has even started. you know just because the buyouts go on doesn't go over this is 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. you can see that with all this mind weiss cover landscape it's really not usable in the sixty's eagle pitcher was pressing for to get out of their leases you know and to move in they also offered to put the chair back in the mines and the department of interior denied stating that the lands were no longer any good for anything they were rooting for agriculture or you know their purpose but the only economic derivative left

their lands with the gravel on the surface and they could sell the gravel when they started realizing that chad had heavy metals and it was was an environmental hazard . part of interior realize that that's a liability since they manage the asset for the tribe if they allow that to be sold and they would incur liability because if this chat were sold and put somewhere else that place might become a superfund site. they're lucky 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 making the ground channel. but eighty years later there's it's seventy five million tons eighty years of kids passing through struggling in school. here gone this chad didn't just heard the kids who tested i.

that was here in mountains before anyone drowning 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 as a result this chad's been just sitting here for eighty nine hundred years you know we're being restricted from our 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 quapaw to replace what they gave up in the b i a made sure this chad stayed right here the b.a.a. said these are the people who are going to bleed because of this waste 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

this land was to replace the land where they came from you know that the quapaw tribe occupied most of what is now arkansas. you know and i feel bad for the people that are living over in picher and i feel bad that they're going to have to move i feel bad that they're going to have to be relocated but you know what quote those didn't want to leave orchids. so. it's giving bad out here. but not saying hardly any birds squirrels you know. ducks geese 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 fall here and you know where are the birds where's the wall live. 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. the worst story would have to be. the kids we let slip through the critics.

the kids that. didn't get any help early on. because if you look but. if you look back in schools history if you talk to families. with those problems who are here. and we didn't know what. hundreds of towns and cities have diminished even died when industry pulls up stakes but these downs 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 back then they had no concept of the future. but now we are the

heirs of our grandparents 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 before there's no more country.

ratcheting up the tension the pentagon says u.s. warships will continue to sail in the gulf despite an iranian warning to stay away from an area where the iran has recently testified mr. israel and the palestinians were returned to the negotiating table for the first time since peace talks broke down more than a year ago. but both sides have played down expectations of a breakthrough ahead of the meeting telling me this new intelligence is for more. than the russian military is on the march to restore its former glory with the kremlin keen to reboot the armed forces and cut out corruption.

worldwide news twenty four seven this is r.t. live from moscow with me rule research welcome to the program the u.s. has responded to a warning from iran to keep its aircraft carriers out of the persian gulf by saying that its warships will continue to sail that the american navy has pulled out of an area where iran was holding ten days of naval wargames during which it successfully test fired a number of different missiles but russia's defense ministry says that despite the latest military exercise the iranians don't have the technology to make intercontinental ballistic missiles meanwhile france is pushing for stricter sanctions saying it's sure to iran is developing nuclear weapons it's the e.u. countries to follow the u.s. in freezing iranian central bank assets and imposing an embargo on oil exports to iran has been threatening to block the strait of hormuz it's one of the world's most.