Picher - Ghost Town

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Picher is a ghost town and former city in Ottawa County, northeastern Oklahoma, United States. It was a major national center of lead and zinc mining for more than 100 years in the heart of the Tri-State Mining District.

Decades of unrestricted subsurface excavation dangerously undermined most of Picher's town buildings and left giant piles of toxic metal-contaminated mine tailings (known as chat) heaped throughout the area. The discovery of cave-in risks, groundwater contamination and health effects associated with the chat piles and subsurface shafts resulted in the site being included in 1983 in the Tar Creek Superfund site by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

The state collaborated on mitigation and remediation measures, but a 1994 study found that 34% of the children in Picher suffered from lead poisoning due to these environmental effects, which could result in lifelong neurological problems.[4] Eventually, the EPA and the state of Oklahoma agreed to a mandatory evacuation and buyout of the entire township.

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