We can't help being surrounded by holiday memories this time of year. I came across a photo of my brother Clark Frayser and me in what looks like a winter wonderland. We were White Christmas-ing at the Santa Claus Ranch in Welch, OK. In the photo we are dressed for the winter as we stood surrounded by trees covered with snow and ice.

Our family lived in west Texas and came to Oklahoma that winter to visit family for Christmas. What memories we took home with us! Our first stop was in Vinita to visit our dad's family, then we went to Welch to visit Sylvia and Dr. J.O. Bradshaw at the Santa Claus Ranch. Sylvia and my mother were sisters and Bradshaw was their maiden names. Sylvia then married a Bradshaw. To make it more interesting, my mother graduated medical school and practiced medicine in Welch with Sylvia's husband, Dr. J.O. Bradshaw, where she was known locally as "Dr. Bea" Bradshaw. She later married my dad and gave up her practice to raise a family. So coming back to Welch for her that winter was a homecoming, a chance to see many of her patients and friends and for them to meet us.

We arrived in time to fill small paper sacks with oranges and hard rock candy for the children who came to sit on Santa's lap in the sleigh with all the reindeers lined up outside the front living room window. Dr. Bradshaw had what you might call a fully outfitted Santa Claus sitting in the sleigh and he had a microphone and speaker rigged up so while he was in the living room, the children could converse with the Santa and the Santa would ask and answer the child. How very modern in the 1950's! I wonder if anyone remembers their conversations with that Santa?

For years and years the Dobson Museum had displays you could count on to stay put. That is finally changing now with the new director, Jordan Boyd. When I visited the museum recently to see the Tri-State Mining display downstairs, I went with such purpose, I never looked either way to see if the "sleigh" had remained a part of the museum's experience. It had been refinished, polished and looked beautiful the last time I had seen it there.

That winter in the mid 50's was a snowy time and for us coming up from our Texas desert, it created a long lasting memory. In the early 70's our family moved to Oklahoma and since then we have experienced some real winters with significant snow and ice events. It didn't happen for us this year, or for Vermont or Buffalo, New York with all reporting unseasonable warmth. We have blooms budding out on the flowering quince, what we have always called fire-in-the-bush and Washington, D.C. has cherry blossoms showing  "little pink warning flags" that the climate is causing plants to change.

The climate is changing, and yes we may yet have some winter, but 2015 is going down in the record books as the warmest year our earth has experienced. This breaks the previous record warmest year which was 2014. Each of the last 20 years has been warmer globally than the year before.

The Santa Claus Ranch is long gone, with a new home built on that property. But memories stay with us. Hard rock candy and a juicy orange will always remind me of Christmas.

Climate change is going to start messing with these memories, too. Oranges around the world have been threatened by a condition called "citrus greening" or HLB (huanglongbing), caused by a bacterial infection carried by a fly. The tree produces less each year and dies after five years. The fruit that is produced never gets sweet. Lots of orchards in Florida and around the world are being dug up and replanted with blueberries and strawberries and peaches.

Pope Francis declared during his visit to the White House that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation. Meaning we need to begin to make every effort now, we, not those who follow us.
Or Christmas just won't be the same without that little orange.

If you had been reading the Federal Register on December 8, you would have found a notice which will effect our future. The proposed consent decree is the latest effort by state and federal officials to recoup cleanup costs for the Tar Creek Superfund Site.

Recently the EPA granted $10 million to the Quapaw Tribe to do restoration on 130 acres north of Commerce, OK on the west side of the road that used to take us to the town of Cardin, for approximately $77,000 an acre. mark Twain used to say, "land, they ain't making any more of it." But that is exactly what the Quapaw Tribe is doing. They are taking wasteland and restoring it for use again. It is $77,000 an acre. At an earlier project the costs were more like $62,000, so costs vary depending on the sad state of the land.

Those numbers got me to thinking. If the Tar creek Superfund Site is 40 square miles, and each square mile is 640 acres, that would mean our site is 25,6000 acres. a few distal areas have been cleared, so let's round it off to 25,000 acres to go.

Read the Department of Justice consent Decree. It is in a comment period until January 7. Be ready to get your pencil out and your calculator. On their website search for Doe run. The first time I heard that name, I immediately thought of a song from the past. "Da Do Run Run" - the Crystals - from the 1960's. If you know it, hum a bit as you do that search.

A big of background: The U.S. EPA and the State of Oklahoma have spend $331 million as of June 30, 2015 at the Tar Creek Superfund site. We are worth it. But they have just now begun the hard work of taking down mountains of chat, lots of it and reclaiming pasture and farmland. The landscape is changing. Not fast enough for me, of course. But it is changing.

The watershed will be shed of mine waste, Missouri and Kansas have begun working on portions of their Tri-State problem. After the rain event we have just experienced, the watershed dumped lots of mine waste down our streams and rivers with it ending up at Grand Lake, a drinking water source for most nearby countries and their residents. We who are affected by this mess are more than just your neighbors in Ottawa county, and we are all worth  the efforts that must be made to protect our health and the environment.

Red the complaint the government made on our behalf against a few of the potentially responsible parties: individuals, companies, or any other parties that are potentially liable for payment of Superfund cleanup costs. PRP's made the money and left the mess. We did not do it, but if the government is left with the costs, it will come out of our taxes until we encourage Congress to reinstate the Superfund tax on polluters.

One of our PRP's Doe Run, a bad actor in Missouri had to pay $65 million dollars for clean up. Our government is asking doe Run to pay EPA $3,433,137 and to pay the state of Oklahoma $62,000. Another of our PRP's "NL" is required to pay EPA $6,603,590 and $225,000 to the state of Oklahoma.

Doe Run could clean up 44 acres plus one for the state. NL could cleanup 85 acres plus 3 for the state. combined these funds could just cover the cost of the current 130 acre Quapaw Tribal project. But when you read the complaint the Department of Justice wrote, what they are requiring these PRP's to pay does not seem like justice.

Quietly sitting on a page in the Consent Decree is the additional $5 million the United States has included to pay EPA for the Department of the Interior's bad behavior at this site, though it is not made clear in the document which of its agencies or bureaus was the bad actor.  It is locally believed the Bureau of Indian Affairs managed the mining leases poorly for the tribal landowners and encouraged leaving the mine wste on the properties. This amount from this potentially responsible party could cripple the long term response needed to pay for the cleanup for this site.

a lot of money was made from mining and it will take even more to clean up the mess. The government can pursue justice for us, and we entrust them to do it to meet the long term goals for cleanup. This settlement seems weak on the side of justice.

This is the judically-approved settlement signed on November 20, 2015 waiting for your comments. I am working on mine while that tune is stuck in my head.

(In December 2014, Joplin-based Childress Royalty co. agreed to a consent decree that called for the company to pay $810,918 to the EPA for costs it incurred responding to the cleanup efforts. Other PRP's paid little for cleanup or have taken chapter 11 Bankruptcy.)