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Making a Difference at the Tar Creek Superfund Site: Community Efforts to Reduce Risk is a book that we hope will inspire other communities facing environmental injustices.
It comes with a DVD featuring a new film Progress at Tar
Creek and two films of youth efforts through service learning.
The first printing
was made possible through a grant from
the National Institutes
of Environmental
Health Sciences.  

Thank you for sharing
our vision to make a difference.
There is still more to be done.  LEAD Agency will accept donations
to reproduce additonal
copies and to allow for postage.

LEAD Agency, Inc.
19257 South 4403 Drive
Vinita, OK 74301

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Shall We Gather
at the River

Filmmakers website

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The Creek Runs Red

Filmmakers website

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Going Blue

Author's website

Blue green algae is naturally occurring and is everywhere; however this outbreak is a toxic variety caused by heavy amounts of nitrogen and especially phosphorus (N & P).   The toxic form contains an organism called cyanotoxins found under cyanobacterial scum.  Visible scum has a thousand-to-million fold cyanotoxins.

Mycrosistins is the toxin found in the Cyanbacterial bloom at Grand Lake.  Mycrosistins cause liver damage and death in high doses (from a few hours to 24 hrs.) and cancer with long term low level doses (WHO 2003).Water can dilute individual cells that break away from the scum.  Small scum mats may break away from large mats and float un noticed to the swimmer, and was up to shore line areas.   Liver damage to children and other issues for adults can occur at dangerous levels according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2003 report.

The algae is normally carried by insects, birds, and bird droppings (insects) on plant leaves that fall into the water.   That is why all ponds, pools and streams will generally have the same algae in each year, in a county wide or more area.  As for what Grand Lake is experiencing now, this is out of control; and, for a lake this size, would not be natural for such a toxic invasion across the whole water body.  I am convinced that the source of this outbreak, past out breaks that were confined to feeder streams, and more mega outbreaks to come are man-made.

Sources encountered include, dumping sewage from yachts to avoid the dock fees, dumping garbage bags into the water with rocks or bricks to hold them down, neglected sewage septic tanks for individual homesteads (a lot of the problem is leakage that may not be detected yet, but mainly not maintaining a schedule to pump them out), fertilizers (both chemical and so-called natural such as poultry waste or mushroom farm waste which do have contaminants in them) and poultry waste fertilizers used in huge quantities on vast crop or hay fields, especially in high wind times (which are illegal in OK), waste water discharges from city sewer systems that are not in compliance with regulations so they are dumping more waste than they should, and the largest source being the poultry industry.

In our case (Grand Lake) the vast majority of Missouri’s poultry industry is located along the OK line.  So, in this case we have three poultry processing facilities which dump waste water and runoff into the feeder streams of Grand Lake; including, all the factory farms that supply them with birds and eggs.  I was told in a public meeting regarding the huge expansion of Moark (they produce eggs for WalMart) when I asked why they didn't have town hall meetings in OK since the pollution from the facilities, which are within 10 miles of OK line and are dumping into (in this case) Elk River and Spring River—the answer from the Director of MO Department of Natural Resources was "frankly I don't give a damn about Oklahoma."  This was in front of a huge crowd with TV cameras and reporters.  The statement never was printed in any OK paper in our area or Tulsa World, so I am the only Okie that heard it as far as I know.

Drew Edmondson fought the industry over the Illinois River and told me many times that if he wins it will help my fight at Grand Lake.  We still don't have a verdict from the judge.  In my experience, whenever environmental law is enforced by a judge it comes out twisted and even against the environmental laws as we know them.

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Read about the new
documentary film,
"Tar Creek," by Vinita
native Matt Myers that premiered 8-13-09. The film
was featured during the
annual Tar Creek
Conference and was shown
9-23-09 at the Coleman
Theatre Beautiful in Miami.