he is trying to restore its full mud glory with the kremlin king to reform the armed forces. those are the headlines here and up next it's the story of a catastrophic environmental disaster and the second part of our special report called tal creek you're watching us. we're right at the eight hundred foot elevation level right here and a lot of. mine discharges are coming. right at the foot. and you can tell that when the the red water mixes with the 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 the chad. the sides of the mine that has the minerals in it are submerged beneath the water and it's isolated from oxygen oxygen is the key. back when they're first filling up there was

a lot of oxygen available in the mines and that was causing oxidation of the mantle which in turn creates basically sulfur so here you have torque creek which starts up in kansas 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 miami only 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 container. that is watershed has been clocking five million gallons a day since there have been clocks. and if water rolls into the mines or slides off a 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. this mine system swallows any groundwater hole and then coughs up one's blood. in a 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 big . 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 the fix. if you drive through picher right now and drive down the road nothing's changed nothing is really changed that they put us all the m.p.l. list it's a disgrace and it's sad but no one has done anything about

the water there but i'm ashamed right now there are many protection agency the bureau of indian affairs the department 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 pitcher and it drive down douse 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 but it's not fit there been whispers about buying this place out since it was named the super fund in eighty three i mean horrible water all of this mine waste direct danger to children they can get the help they needed should have an easy 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 but starkly grabs it instead an ace in the hole oklahoma senior senator jim inhofe steer 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 he refused. we could also know what he was cooking the problem was that in office a soldier of industry fact is in-house 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 in 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 plan the same day it was released if you are in fifty trucks a day all day it would take forty years just to move the jet forty years moving 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 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 mine. didn't hear no noise or. there was always

a pop and it just said. and i am surprised it. picher is just all 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 that goes along with hard rock mining you know it turns out that the area 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 took what 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 land that you're seeing out there it's all undermined in pitcher and card and more people are live and they could wake up one day and their house could be collapsed in the morning.

they didn't care what they didn't do that the city pitcher is just sitting on pillars and. the pillars and 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 you're feeling right here is 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. if you can account for all the risk an 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 that. 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 in 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 buyout so nobody feeds this two million dollar study and you can't ignore the dead or what the data shows in regards to the 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 run because they have to worry about the more kids being raised in this environment you know we got to put them into that 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 in 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 a in some standard 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 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 put a 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 out what are very for values i mean that's art and. like with any appraisal not everybody is happy with what they're phrased but. 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 ask 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 but. i hate to move you know harder to do. stuff on the walls

and pictures by staff and get to have to get rid of. different things as 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 are there now 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 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 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 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 here and it's here that 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 stories 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 banks package the gunshop the house the land three lots eighty dollars and there's no way you go to mom and replace this for eighty thousand dollars and it's impossible. to hundred two thousand the fair yes and i don't think i can actually go to my man replace it for one hundred. and i want to all of a try to find out why and they said well that's just what we're part of that their prices are have been in business for twenty five years they should know what they're doing all of them are there though. 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 consistency and the trust will not hold him accountable. to listen now we say can i i listened what you guys listen we have people want to say this is not like the first by well we did the same things we put something up for bid we hired a contractor we have gone in and and gotten their appraisals and we've had them review i mean and in all honesty the 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 truth is supposed to take care of these people and they're not doing it or they're going to be people who feel like they were do more yes. what i can do it sure is that there's been no conspiracy on the part of anyone to get higher values for certain people 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 is a game of hard. gray health this lap siding one hundred fifteen thousand that house a. house that's been moved three times probably at least eighty years. ok this house on the left longs to messi and sammy bates and i have been offered seventy thousand cinnabar said there is something wrong with the beats appraisal so i use

a trust why did you not tell me we did it we actually your problem we did you didn't raise that as it mean that we get you just because we did worse and i rated lower their standing around with the beat appraisal so let's leave it the same and . i don't want that mean we got three new property. it is significant change that. probably. marquee can make it mean tell me you didn't find anything room. like what we got here. i. 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 heart's 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 dollars 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 is behind and they said mrs home on her couch and say maybe we gave the heart's too much i mean we made a mistake i think before well and in the same breath they think missy and sammy got a good run five dollars. is not a hollywood story and where does this leave those who've already worked a lifetime and a course in ok i paid back with chapter eleven and ninety two years old. and i said i did it. jackie bird sea and she called me the other day she's so worried about movement she isn't one she got no neighbors run across the street sell she's god and she don't know about her house since they offered two hundred two thousand

on it i think she said tell me so i don't know what she's going to. 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 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 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's 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 us solders to come and look at nasa oh my gosh a 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 or get and it 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 on what he when he she was up on the cross three and he

got her and her this is what environmental problems look like part 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 spot of their. 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 the your here's the war superfund site the country. talk route has even started. you know just because the buyouts go on there's a new job or just war and they can buy these people out which is their 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 and you can see that with all this mine why it's covering the 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 cook the. back in the mines and the department of interior. stating the the lands were no longer any good for anything they were ruined for

agriculture is you know their purpose but the only economic derivative left to their lands was the gravel on the surface and that they could sell the gravel when they start realizing that chad had heavy metals and it was was environmentally hazardous part of interior realize that that's a liability since they manage the asset for the tribe if they allow that to be sold then 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 tremble 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 was running test. so not only is 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 chat stayed right here the b i 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 one day and 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. 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 couples didn't want to leave orchids. so. it's giving bad out here. but not saying hardly any birds squirrels you know. ducks yes you know i don't know what's going on here this this is like rachel carson's and i mare today you know we're having

a silent fall here and 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. i think the worst story would have to be. on. the worst story would have to be the kids we let slip through the cracks.

the kids that. 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. with those probes 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 miss. and there we are about to shoot the porch light out on this town. i mean more times can we strike lead or uranium or. before there's no more country.

quite. ratcheting up the tension the pentagon says u.s. warships will continue to sail in the gulf despite iran you know warning to stay away from an area where tehran has recently testified mr. israel and the palestinians return 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 join me for this new intel of the formal. and the russian military is on the march to restore its former glory but the kremlin keen to reboot the armed forces.