Earlier this week Oklahoma's Secretary of Energy and Environment Ken Wagner and ODEQ Executive Director, Scott Thompson actually sat on our couch at the LEAD Agency and we had a conversation. They each brought some of  their staff so pretty much every chair in the room was filled.

LEAD Agency has been the environmental justice organization for NE Oklahoma since 1997. We listen and when we are allowed share your stories with people who have power and influence to make our lives safer and better. That's what we were doing while June Taylor and Tim Jones worked with the Ottawa County Boys and Girls Club on their last day of summer in our Community Garden. Lois Lively was quietly making cookies because nothing makes a place smell friendlier and cozier than freshly baked cookies. And since I was probably most nervous the scent made getting through the experience easier.

It is a responsibility to carry the messages of community members, to get them right, to hope to convey the seriousness protecting your health and your children's health is to us. As the author and therapist Clarissa Pinkola Estes would say, "Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach." Right there in the front room we discussed a complaint I made on the DEQ Hotline, a complaint about something I was relieved to learn the whole entourage had seen for themselves on their site visit the day before.

 As a Waterkeeper, my role is to protect water and especially waters most at risk from polluters and that is exactly what it appeared we were seeing as Virgil Tarter drove his mother's car down a narrow dirt road in the all but abandoned area known as Hockerville. After we had driven around the Tar Creek Superfund Site and mile after mile we had viewed restored land, reclaimed from the mine waste that had laid upon it for nearly a hundred years, now green with growing crops from the work of the QUAPAWS, DEQ and EPA.

I was prepared to see even more as we crept up a narrow tree covered dirt road nearing what had been the always disappointing scene of a huge sinkhole where thousands of used tires had been dumped over the decades. I had prepared myself for the relief of NOT finding it, just knowing it would have been filled, and of course all the tires removed before the filling. But I was aghast to find it was still there, the tires not visible as the whole site was covered with car bodies. It was as if all those old tires had called their cars to join them in the void, "Come on in the Water's fine!" Not all the cars and trucks and the lone boat could get in, as there was a brand new shiny chain link fence keeping them from entering as the crane, not a water bird, as the crane-able-to-lift-a-car-type crane stood like the prison warden inside.

But what I saw were vehicles with oil, gas, antifreeze all sitting on the edge able to be spilling those fluids into the sinkhole and as such straight into the Boone Aquifer, still a drinking water source for people not far from there. A young man was working on a vehicle as we passed, demonstrating it was not an abandoned site.

Just think: A single drop of used motor oil can contaminate a million drops of water, or a single gallon of oil can contaminate a million gallons of ground water, it was clear right then that operation must stop.

Had you seen it, you too would have known, THIS IS NOT RIGHT. And that is when we have to remember the thing we say to kids, "See something? Say Something" and in this case the who to tell is the DEQ Hotline 800-522-0206. Ottawa County does not have a ECLS an Emergency Complaints Local Service person anymore. When Clyde Mason and Sharon Robbins retired, DEQ closed their office, so the person to investigate the complaint has to come from Delaware County. I hope he took help with him to investigate this complaint. Sinkholes have been known as great places to look for missing persons.

All to say, the conversation continued as they listened, and their staff discussed why they have made decisions we have not understood when changes to the cleanup standard is proposed.

The topics to be covered that day were on a cheat-sheet only Martin Lively and I had, and we went through them. But we were all caught off guard when LEAD's Board President, Louis "Red" Mathia interjected his hope that the barrels buried offsite and the sludge be investigated. Barrels that were brought here from Sayre, Oklahoma. It got quiet as he spoke.

Reflecting at that moment of the list we have and how it can grow with the knowledge our community members have, we truly are an environmental justice community and as such need the ear of the people in power who come to visit.

UPDATE: I received a call from the DEQ ECLS who investigated the complaint. They already had an open case on it. These things take time, I was told.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

What does it cost to volunteer? and who would want to? And how much time does it take?

The worldwide company Cisco allows their employees to spend a week volunteering for a non-profit of their choosing and Will Frayser, my nephew: OUR LUCK chose LEAD Agency! This is his week volunteering and he will still receive this weeks' salary, getting paid to do good deeds by a company reaching out into communities to lend a hand! Cisco develops, manufactures and sells high-tech products you probably have in your house or office.

LEAD Agency has a Cisco router but they have fleets of employees who are producing networking hardware, IT services and equipment used in telecommunications. So Cisco is big and Will is doing work and works with others doing the behind the scenes that we all use to make our lives operate into the decades to come.

Maddie, a LEAD Agency volunteer from the past and her friend are bringing  their bicycles on Saturday to ride our Recycle Tar Creek Bike Ride and Rally. It is a 5 mile ride right through Miami over the unmarked Tar Creek bridges. Why would we do it? Just checking to see how our creek is doing as the anniversary of 40 years of BAD WATER approaches this fall. Let's peek over the edge, let's look for fish and frogs. We will see if her notorious tainted rust color has left stains again after the latest flood waters have receded. Will Frayser had seen Tar Creek when he was a little boy, but had no recollection of it as he peered at it just yesterday, but I remember and know it looks the same now as it did when he was half his height and age.

It is estimated to take another set of decades to get this place cleaned up, making it look like we are actually STUCK IN THE MIDDLE of the cleanup. Our 21st National Environmental Conference at Tar Creek will be held September 17 and 18 at NEO in the Student Union. We are reaching back to find some of the people who first made actions here and are asking them to share what they did and why it was important to them then to do it. Many of who we might have asked have passed on, forty years is a long time to most of us. You will have memories and probably questions about what all happened and why it is taking so long to get on with it.

Our native flowers are thriving in our Community Garden, the Spiderwort Tradescantia obiensis  and the wild Bergamot Monarda fistulosa have finished. but the Black-eyed Susan's, Rudbeckia hirta, the Purple Milkweed Asclepias purpurascens which looks pink and the Blue Vervain Verbena hastata which looks purple to me are blooming, both will soon be standing nearly 6 feet tall and making a stand for the incoming butterflies. They of course will stop at the welcoming butterfly center, taking a sip of water and visiting the Blazing Star Liatris, milkweed and periwinkles the Boys and Girls Club kids have planted with June Taylor this season and fed with fresh banana peel.

The tall grasses, the lambs quarter, marigolds all popping up from the seeds they left behind last year and the kale and sage are coming up from the seeds they dropped this year. But sprinkled in between these are the usual garden variety vegetables and the spreading ever-bearing strawberry plants, you can see a variety of volunteers who make sure our Community Garden thrives.

We celebrate both the garden and the volunteers at our summer Garden Parties. Mark your calendar, the next one will be August 1, with music and the Pile it All On Salad, but until then, stop by carry a bucket of rainwater to a thirsty pumpkin or choose your favorite and baby it this summer. The rains have stopped and they all got spoiled.

There was a surprise this week, our garden actually grew. What? Yes, we had a section of our garden we had never been able to use because of the lead contaminated soil. We had covered it with sheeting and bounded with railroad ties, with a warning sign made by one of our Youth Activists to NEVER USE RR ties in a Garden. If you call the DEQ Hotline number 800-522-0206, you can get action. That is what we did, and all of that BAD DIRT is gone and they took the railroad ties, too! Clean soil was brought in and we are planting corn and cantalope, of course.

It takes work to loosen that new freshly packed soil but volunteers are doing it and it is happening. Perhaps the challenges seem too great, but the small spaces we have around us can be improved, whether by our own work, or with the volunteers who choose to help, or when the Superfund Program brings in dirt movers in hazmat suits.
Changes can happen and the rewards can be beautiful and the butterflies are free.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

 
Last Friday while many were recuperating from a 4th of July holiday, I entered a boardroom in Tulsa to meet with people who spoke Arabic from a country our country spent billions tearing up in a war we will always wonder if it should have happened. The six officials I faced were in charge of water in Iraq, and I spoke to them as a single woman who speaks for water, as the Tar Creekkeeper.

How quickly time passed with the questions they asked, as well as the answers they gave to my questions. Water is precious, anywhere, but in a desert country, what a responsibility to protect the resource all require for life. Industrial processes, waste water discharges pollute their water which is scarce and being depleted. Since becoming the Tar Creekkeeper, the creek has experienced an intentional oil spill, a black water fish kill and recently flooded neighboring properties with her metal-loaded water.

LEAD Agency is a member of the Waterkeeper Alliance with 2 programs, first our Grand Riverkeeper with Earl Hatley and more recently the addition of the Tar Creekkeeper position, which I am humbled to claim. But more importantly for the water officials that day learned Iraq has their own Waterkeeper! The translator announced it and they wanted his name, and I simply said, "Google Iraq Waterkeeper" and moments later, they knew all about him. And a bit more about how state and national environmental agencies need Waterkeepers to inform them where pollution is occurring so it can be dealt with quickly.

My time was over with them, but not before we stood together proudly united as Water Protectors, my brother, Clark Frayser and I were captured in the photograph. After teaching Indian Art at Alexander Elementary in Commerce, OK, Clark taught art another twenty years at Eisenhower Elementary in Tulsa. And since retiring spends time volunteering with Tulsa Global Alliance as they host international visitors throughout the year. This meeting was hosted by that organization. 

It has taken me awhile to settle in as the Tar Creekkeeper, since though pushy, taking the center stage has been awkward, not being a scientist or a lawyer, as many Waterkeepers are. The organization is the fastest growing grassroots environmental movement in the world dedicated to swimmable, fishable watersheds and those are certainly our goals here.

Nelson Mandela spoke in his Inaugural Speech, "as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously Give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others." To be a movement for a Clean Tar Creek, it will take many others being liberated into action.

So it was fitting that yesterday, a man from St. Paul, Minnesota who had previously lived in Oklahoma where Mike Synar had been his US Representative called our office. Brian was his name, and he knows more about Mike Synar than anyone I ever knew.

Though it was Governor Nigh's Tar Creek Task Force that gave that little creek importance on a national stage, results of the findings were presented to the public at a meeting held in Tulsa at the Vo-Tech that I attended with my son, Dana, who had just learned to write in cursive and took notes during the whole event. Two people I remembered from the meeting, were Mike Synar our district's US Representative and Dr. John Neuberger with his findings on the health impacts in Ottawa County. Perhaps it was Synar's influence, Tar Creek made it as a Superfund Site in 1983 where it remains today.

All of us put Tar Creek to bed in our minds until all those Indian children were found to be lead poisoned and children are why money is still being spent here to lower lead exposures. Students at Miami High School took on Tar Creek and we thought the work ought to be dedicated to Synar. Ironically, I had just found my son's notes with maps and graphs and with that in hand did what we did back in those days before Google, and dialed information and an operator helped me. I got Mike's phone number, called  and when he answered, mustered the courage to ask his permission to let our Tar Creek Project be dedicated to him... and he agreed!

He died of a brain tumor at age 45 only a month later on January 9, 1996. But just months earlier he had received one of the Profiles in Courage Awards given "to individuals who, by acting in accord with their conscience, risked their careers or lives by pursuing a larger vision of the national, state or local interest in opposition to popular opinion or pressure from constituents or other local interests," and he had done that throughout his career of public service. Those Cherokee Volunteers decided they would give out Environmental Excellence Awards in his honor to people who exemplify the spirit and drive Mike Synar embodied and LEAD has continued since.

And Brian the Synar "groupie" had found us by viewing a YouTube of one of our awards being presented. There ought to be a book about Mike Synar and that young man may be up to it, but he needs to consult with my son Dana Jim, working together knowing what they know, Mike could be pleased with the results.

But there ought to be a book on all the Mike Synar Environmental Excellence Awardees, those who showed courage, risked their lives and pursued a larger vision. But it will have to be in volumes because there are always more to honor, as the work continues and will for the coming decades as we pull together and muster this place better.

LEAD's Garden Party is Tuesday July 16 with Tulsa violinist Linda Adkins and Recycle Tar Creek Bike Ride and Rally on Saturday July 20. Call 918 542 9399 for details.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

Most of the resolutions we make we give up before we even announce them out-loud. In fact fewer and fewer people put them out there anymore knowing this.

But there are the other resolutions, ones we formally announce with whereas and therefores and signatures to put them out to the public for the greater good. Whether they produce greater good or not, will at some moment in the future be determined.

The vote was unanimous at the Intertribal Council, with all tribal leaders represented passing approval of a resolution for EPA to conduct a complete investigation of the BF Goodrich plant and conduct a complete cleanup of the site, making sure the mine shafts and the Roubidoux wells were closed properly to protect our drinking water aquifer.  The vote at the LEAD Agency meeting was to approve the resolution and we learned later the Democrats of Ottawa County also passed the resolution.

My resolution week ended officially last Friday morning by handing over three duly signed sets to EPA: David Gray, the Acting EPA Region 6 administrator and Erin Chancellor, his Chief of Staff and we forgot to get a photo to commemorate the moment. As most resolutions, we were left with no evidence it had been delivered and only hope the signed documents would do the good we had expressed in the resolving.

And that is all we ever have. Hope. And the understanding that hopes usually never come true if they are left unspoken, left as those silent hopes for the future we never dare to ask to come to pass. Our hope, of all those signatories on these resolutions, hope this works for the greater good and the BF Goodrich site is duly investigated and cleansed of the pollutants left behind.

This week we remember our country's Revolution, made possible by the acts of the people FOR the people and for the hope of creating a country with the freedoms we have ended up enjoying.

While we were focused on BF Goodrich, and looked away from our recent flooding, only for those few moments, we have learned that Senator Inhofe inserted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act which as Senator Inhofe said, “The National Defense Authorization Act helps our military meet the goals of the National Defense Strategy, supports our troops, and protects American freedom and prosperity. It is the most important bill we’ll consider all year.”

But his amendment contains no National Security implications, no words describing how American national security with be protected from undue influence and other security threats. There is not a fighter plane, a helicopter, a submarine, or a word about our military in it. His amendment takes away the hopes for the freedom to sleep at night in Miami with the sound of rain on the roof without the fear of flooding. All sorts of individuals, organizations and tribes, including the City of Miami have submitted comments to FERC on GRDA's request to raise the flood pool in the new 50 year re-licensing of the Pensacola Dam. All those comments were written with the hope of protecting citizens from more extensive flooding caused by the next rain events, and those that follow for the next 50 years, we know will occur.

It seems when reading the amendment, that all our comments were read, and the amendment manufactured to maneuver ways to block each of them and ensure future floods will be yet more devastating.  The Senate passed the bill before they left for the 4th of July recess.  When the people cannot trust officials in power to look after the greater good, revolutions occur, as demonstrated in our nation's past that we celebrate this week.

But for these times, Senator Inhofe’s action may result in simply somebody writing the Senator a letter, maybe he gets two letters. But what he might get is an opponent in his next election. That for the quiet, resolved people we are, that would show him there are consequences for actions like his recent amendment for GRDA. But what would get the real change would be the numbers of votes at the ballot box for that opponent. This is where the real revolutions that change this nation happen these days.

It won’t be a revolution for me this week, but In honor of all this resolution talk, I decided to resolve to give up my favorite bottled beverage. Four days and counting, that will show the industry, and not a single other person had to sign my resolution to save the money, the calories and the bottle from the recycler.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim