Larry Roberts, the operations manager of the Lead- Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust, makes sure that people have been cleared out for demolition in Picher, Oklahoma. His job is to inspect contaminated buildings that the state of Oklahoma will buy and tear down.
Miners found lead in Picher, making the town the center of that market. Picher was the 20th century boomtown, mining belt that ran through Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri producing most of the lead for US bullets in World Wars I and II. Miners found zinc, which helped keep tanks and other steel from rusting during the wars. When lode ran dry in 1970, the mining companies moved out and residents and state governments offered residents an average of $55 per square foot to evacuate their homes. Picher was a dead city. Some people refused to leave, calling themselves chat rats. Roberts wanted nothing to do with them.
Places like Pitcher are why Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980. Civilization is slowly poisoning us from lead mining, to car commuting. Power grids will burn out, climate hears up and industrial accidents ravage the ecosystem and the cities. In the mid-'90s blood tests showed that 63% of the cities children were suffering from lead poisoning. The EPA spent $140 million trying to replace the topsoil and in 2000 the lack of progress, ordered that the town needed to be evacuated.
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