What is LEAD Agency doing right now? We are deeply into surveys.
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Red Dirt and Brownfields was not a place but a time.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou
 What right do a group of fellows have to violate the Clean Water Act and dam up a natural flowing stream? No right. It is against the law.  Action is the bridge between thoughts and reality ~ Richie Norton I'd like there to be a future. Of course there will be a future, tomorrow will begin. But what kind of a future do you want? Arrogance is a map of a road that leads to bridges that are out.
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We can get our head around the Tar Creek watershed, we know those ephemeral streams who catch up to her and add their flows to her stream. We even can get the Neosho watershed because with Tar Creek we get knee deep into them at high water events or watch as the roads close and we automatically reroute our days' errands. But think bigger. Let's think about the whole Tri-State Mining District and those combined watersheds and get the calculator out to find it is 2,500 square miles of lands that from 1885 to 1970 engaged in hard rock mining. And all the land that was gouged open, dug into, scarred and left with her innards strewn about for all the world to see or climb upon ooze out metals every time the rains come.
Water the source of all life, can move mountains, can carve canyons and will bring down and through this grand watershed the stuff that all that mining left behind and blend it with the sediment it scours away and takes that load far from its source and deposits it time and again downstream. Year after year, rain event followed by rain events, these deposits land on land that was never mined - but as if we never mind-ed, it lays those deposits over and over. The loads accumulating and the plants who grow there, that thrive can harm us.
There is a model that is being discussed, which will be a visual take on what exactly is happening in the big watershed that both EPA's Region 6 and Region 7 have released to the public for you to have a chance to give comments back to them, by August 3. Officially it is entitled: Draft Fate and Transport Model Analysis and Proposal for the Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study for the Tri-State Mining District.
The document discusses and explains the virtual model and how it can be manipulated to illustrate the actual lands and the waters that flow on it, through it and lie beneath it. And what happens if any bit of the landscape changes and how that change can impact or improve the environment it leaves behind. Looking at it in this way, studying it, messing with this more in one bend of the creek, leaving this chat pile and then removing it. All done on a computer which can analyze those actions and give the designers of our future quick immediate feedback, rather than get the bulldozers out and move material for a couple of years and find then that those actions might have HARMED us. Using this model can speed up the actions that will occur. At least that is what this document brings to us.
Note the first words: Fate and Transport. Our fate actually is being the center of this document, but it never says THAT. Fate and Transport is the movement of contaminants in sediment and floodplain soils from where they are to where they end up as water moves them. This model can allow us to see the various contaminants of concern and how they travel from their there and to us where we are.
Our fate is determined by that stuff and how it travels.
There is a real study of how water travels the natural path water takes to cut and scour and then deposit. "Water cannot be contained within the banks of the creeks and streams, so the water spreads out over the floodplain (with) the natural path it has." The hydrology of the Tri-State Mining District is almost mind blowing. All that has laid and left as residue lies in this larger watershed and please imagine with me those creeks, streams and rivers and where that water flows and where it comes to reside.
Think on a GRAND scale. That was a hint. The watershed drains to and is captured in our Grand Lake o' the Cherokees. That same lake that holds the waters coming and allows some waters to flow on through and generate power, until in-coming water can no longer be only maintained in time and space and begins to gather and spread outside the boundaries holding it, backing up our water until it comes in our front doors. We have worried simply of our carpets getting wet and the work it takes to muck out our homes and businesses to start over, but how does our environment muck out? It doesn't. Layer after layer of muck from the Tri-State Mining District has spread out on the environment broadly for over a hundred years. Flood after flood.
And this will continue until that source material throughout the 2,500 miles is removed.
The model can use historical data and the model's keeper is asked you, the public, to comment on how else and what else to consider. You get a voice. I am planning to use mine and hope you will too.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
Water the source of all life, can move mountains, can carve canyons and will bring down and through this grand watershed the stuff that all that mining left behind and blend it with the sediment it scours away and takes that load far from its source and deposits it time and again downstream. Year after year, rain event followed by rain events, these deposits land on land that was never mined - but as if we never mind-ed, it lays those deposits over and over. The loads accumulating and the plants who grow there, that thrive can harm us.
There is a model that is being discussed, which will be a visual take on what exactly is happening in the big watershed that both EPA's Region 6 and Region 7 have released to the public for you to have a chance to give comments back to them, by August 3. Officially it is entitled: Draft Fate and Transport Model Analysis and Proposal for the Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study for the Tri-State Mining District.
The document discusses and explains the virtual model and how it can be manipulated to illustrate the actual lands and the waters that flow on it, through it and lie beneath it. And what happens if any bit of the landscape changes and how that change can impact or improve the environment it leaves behind. Looking at it in this way, studying it, messing with this more in one bend of the creek, leaving this chat pile and then removing it. All done on a computer which can analyze those actions and give the designers of our future quick immediate feedback, rather than get the bulldozers out and move material for a couple of years and find then that those actions might have HARMED us. Using this model can speed up the actions that will occur. At least that is what this document brings to us.
Note the first words: Fate and Transport. Our fate actually is being the center of this document, but it never says THAT. Fate and Transport is the movement of contaminants in sediment and floodplain soils from where they are to where they end up as water moves them. This model can allow us to see the various contaminants of concern and how they travel from their there and to us where we are.
Our fate is determined by that stuff and how it travels.
There is a real study of how water travels the natural path water takes to cut and scour and then deposit. "Water cannot be contained within the banks of the creeks and streams, so the water spreads out over the floodplain (with) the natural path it has." The hydrology of the Tri-State Mining District is almost mind blowing. All that has laid and left as residue lies in this larger watershed and please imagine with me those creeks, streams and rivers and where that water flows and where it comes to reside.
Think on a GRAND scale. That was a hint. The watershed drains to and is captured in our Grand Lake o' the Cherokees. That same lake that holds the waters coming and allows some waters to flow on through and generate power, until in-coming water can no longer be only maintained in time and space and begins to gather and spread outside the boundaries holding it, backing up our water until it comes in our front doors. We have worried simply of our carpets getting wet and the work it takes to muck out our homes and businesses to start over, but how does our environment muck out? It doesn't. Layer after layer of muck from the Tri-State Mining District has spread out on the environment broadly for over a hundred years. Flood after flood.
And this will continue until that source material throughout the 2,500 miles is removed.
The model can use historical data and the model's keeper is asked you, the public, to comment on how else and what else to consider. You get a voice. I am planning to use mine and hope you will too.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
Since I became LEAD Agency's Tar Creekkeeper, recognized by the Waterkeeper Alliance for being her best advocate, I have struggled to get my vessel from one place to the next. Hiking it up and onto my Jeep since you might not have noticed, my height has made this a challenge, until yesterday.
There in my barn are the last remaining square bales from hay we baled back after the 2007 ice storm. They have lost their prime and have dried out to be so light as to allow the smallest of people to lift them with one hand. And as such are the perfect step stool to use to stand upon to lift that kayak up and on for traveling.
People don't value square bales like they used to. Boys earned their first real money during summers of the past by working the hay fields, lifting those fresh, heavy bales up and onto a truck. They got stronger by doing it and used it as prep for the fall's football season. Technology has changed and tractors lift and carry those bales that teams of football players would have difficulty getting huddled around to move.
But the remnants have become my new method of mounting kayaks to service.
This week these also are assisting in gathering samples for the scientific research Wellesley College is conducting here in the Tar Creek Superfund site and where her contaminants come to reside. The value to us all is that others coming with questions may provide answers we had not known to ask.
Dan Brabander has a long history at this site, having accompanied teams of researchers in the 2000’s who looked both at human health but also the substances lying in our environment that we know impact our health. He, as others who have worked here, we have learned, come to never forget us. You, by the way, in the amazing way you are you, have been part of the reason, too. When a community is open to meeting strangers and providing information, greetings on the sidewalk, casual conversations at a café. You are remembered. And our site gnaws at them, too. Respecting us impounds their need to come back to wrestle with their universities, colleges, foundations to fund work that can ease our load of toxins and help us have an environment that seasons bring joys to enjoy.
So this week, Dan has brought his team of female students: Iris Cessna, Alice Dricker, and Leslie Monzon and a former student, Claire Hayhow, who took her own vacation time from a job at the Silent Spring Foundation with actually another former researcher at our site. They are investigating for us the things that are required for life on this planet. Air, water and soil. They are exploring how we measure what and how much and how big particulates are that hang in the air we breathe. Samples are being taken at wetlands near chat piles, both of the plants that are thriving in them, but the sediment beneath and the water they release into our creeks. What about the orange staining on the trees we are now so used to seeing we don’t even see it anymore? They are XRF-ing it in the field checking for the levels of metals that reside ON our trees.
A fleet of vessels join us this morning as we lift off at Riverview Park with the Grand Riverkeeper boat, the Tar Creekkeeper kayaks, the 3-woman canoe, with Paige Hankins at the helm took off to take a core sample of the channel bar where Tar Creek meets the Neosho. Dan was with other researchers in those early years of this century and took a similar core there and brought it back to our other LEAD Agency office and laid it out on the floor of that building. It looked like a tiger-tail, with orange and black stripes, solid and tube like. And we are off to collect its sister this morning. With the cool morning, the rare coolness this morning, we hope to continue down to Twin Bridges to find the next one where the Neosho meets the Spring. I have heard it called almost a dike that is forming that may be helping to flood us in those high rain events. If we find it and can core it, Dan and his team can tell us what it consists of, and perhaps much more.
We are launching and would love for you to join us in future launches as we explore and try to better understand what lies beneath us, what we float upon, what our soils hold and what we are breathing.
In the meantime, be kind to strangers, they come back to find the answers to what harms us.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
There in my barn are the last remaining square bales from hay we baled back after the 2007 ice storm. They have lost their prime and have dried out to be so light as to allow the smallest of people to lift them with one hand. And as such are the perfect step stool to use to stand upon to lift that kayak up and on for traveling.
People don't value square bales like they used to. Boys earned their first real money during summers of the past by working the hay fields, lifting those fresh, heavy bales up and onto a truck. They got stronger by doing it and used it as prep for the fall's football season. Technology has changed and tractors lift and carry those bales that teams of football players would have difficulty getting huddled around to move.
But the remnants have become my new method of mounting kayaks to service.
This week these also are assisting in gathering samples for the scientific research Wellesley College is conducting here in the Tar Creek Superfund site and where her contaminants come to reside. The value to us all is that others coming with questions may provide answers we had not known to ask.
Dan Brabander has a long history at this site, having accompanied teams of researchers in the 2000’s who looked both at human health but also the substances lying in our environment that we know impact our health. He, as others who have worked here, we have learned, come to never forget us. You, by the way, in the amazing way you are you, have been part of the reason, too. When a community is open to meeting strangers and providing information, greetings on the sidewalk, casual conversations at a café. You are remembered. And our site gnaws at them, too. Respecting us impounds their need to come back to wrestle with their universities, colleges, foundations to fund work that can ease our load of toxins and help us have an environment that seasons bring joys to enjoy.
So this week, Dan has brought his team of female students: Iris Cessna, Alice Dricker, and Leslie Monzon and a former student, Claire Hayhow, who took her own vacation time from a job at the Silent Spring Foundation with actually another former researcher at our site. They are investigating for us the things that are required for life on this planet. Air, water and soil. They are exploring how we measure what and how much and how big particulates are that hang in the air we breathe. Samples are being taken at wetlands near chat piles, both of the plants that are thriving in them, but the sediment beneath and the water they release into our creeks. What about the orange staining on the trees we are now so used to seeing we don’t even see it anymore? They are XRF-ing it in the field checking for the levels of metals that reside ON our trees.
A fleet of vessels join us this morning as we lift off at Riverview Park with the Grand Riverkeeper boat, the Tar Creekkeeper kayaks, the 3-woman canoe, with Paige Hankins at the helm took off to take a core sample of the channel bar where Tar Creek meets the Neosho. Dan was with other researchers in those early years of this century and took a similar core there and brought it back to our other LEAD Agency office and laid it out on the floor of that building. It looked like a tiger-tail, with orange and black stripes, solid and tube like. And we are off to collect its sister this morning. With the cool morning, the rare coolness this morning, we hope to continue down to Twin Bridges to find the next one where the Neosho meets the Spring. I have heard it called almost a dike that is forming that may be helping to flood us in those high rain events. If we find it and can core it, Dan and his team can tell us what it consists of, and perhaps much more.
We are launching and would love for you to join us in future launches as we explore and try to better understand what lies beneath us, what we float upon, what our soils hold and what we are breathing.
In the meantime, be kind to strangers, they come back to find the answers to what harms us.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
I recycle my glass. It hasn't been easy since the place in Vinita folded and quit taking any. We have all hoped Red Cedar or the City of Miami would take on recycling glass, but in the meantime, every quarter, I load up glass separated by color in old empty 16 pound cat food sacks that accumulate during that period of time at home. Once full, they line the back of the 98 Chevy pickup and go to Claremore to the MET.
There is really nothing louder than glass breaking when it gains speed on its way down into the metal bin and crashes against the floor, shattering into the slivers you do not want to have impale you.
But ground glass, is a term that hasn't been part of my experience. But is the title of the newly released book of essays by writer Kathryn Savage. Reading each page is a walk through a woman's discovery of place, her home-based place and those of others she would later encounter as she dealt with the deep feelings of loss and grief and how the places we hold as home can harm us as we simply live our lives in toxic places.
Kathryn shares the intimate remembrances of time with her father, who longed to live, but whose body could not heal. She comes to believe her neighborhood and so many others housed near industrial complexes could be at risk of exposures to what lies beneath in the aquifers, in the ground water and certainly in the air and soil.
She and I have spent hours talking over the last several years. But what I didn't know is her conversations and visits to other toxic sites and the people we meet inside the pages of Ground Glass. Kathryn is a writer, and introduces us throughout the book to writers, poets and artists who have influenced the direction of her artistic search for the connectedness to land and in many times to land harmed by man.
As it turned out Ground Glass is a medical term for the way lungs look in x-rays and CT scans, the gray areas can indicate grave health concerns such as: pneumonia, cancer and COVID-19 and in this book, an indication doctors noticed in the x-rays of the author's father: a hazy opacity resisting interpretation.
His health triggers thoughts on how deeply we have all consumed the toxins around us, until as Kathryn describes herself as an industrial waste site. "I am both who and where I've come from." Bodies, she says are environments.
Her thoughts that his disease could have been accelerated by lived experiences actually triggered LEAD Agency over 20 years ago to conduct a Health Survey to find out if living here is dangerous to our health, and reminded me that it is time to take to the streets with that and a couple of other surveys this summer to ask you questions you long to be asked.
Kathryn appeared one hot afternoon last year when we discovered the first 2 child-made dams on Tar Creek and jumped in with my son and I to remove some of the stones to allow water to flow more freely.
Since then she has been organizing events bringing people together in Tulsa first to focus on Tar Creek and secondly to hear the poems of the incarcerated men and women and to meet the two women who have organized the programs that bring poetry behind bars.
One of the last pages of Ground Glass has a truly remarkable statement: A percentage of the sale of this book will support work being done by the LEAD Agency and the Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution. She goes on to say, "Both organizations take action to counter environmental hazards and stand up for healthy water, air and environmental justice through education, advocacy and collaboration."
Now, that will throw you. What a gracious way to honor the work LEAD Agency does and to help us keep doing it.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
There is really nothing louder than glass breaking when it gains speed on its way down into the metal bin and crashes against the floor, shattering into the slivers you do not want to have impale you.
But ground glass, is a term that hasn't been part of my experience. But is the title of the newly released book of essays by writer Kathryn Savage. Reading each page is a walk through a woman's discovery of place, her home-based place and those of others she would later encounter as she dealt with the deep feelings of loss and grief and how the places we hold as home can harm us as we simply live our lives in toxic places.
Kathryn shares the intimate remembrances of time with her father, who longed to live, but whose body could not heal. She comes to believe her neighborhood and so many others housed near industrial complexes could be at risk of exposures to what lies beneath in the aquifers, in the ground water and certainly in the air and soil.
She and I have spent hours talking over the last several years. But what I didn't know is her conversations and visits to other toxic sites and the people we meet inside the pages of Ground Glass. Kathryn is a writer, and introduces us throughout the book to writers, poets and artists who have influenced the direction of her artistic search for the connectedness to land and in many times to land harmed by man.
As it turned out Ground Glass is a medical term for the way lungs look in x-rays and CT scans, the gray areas can indicate grave health concerns such as: pneumonia, cancer and COVID-19 and in this book, an indication doctors noticed in the x-rays of the author's father: a hazy opacity resisting interpretation.
His health triggers thoughts on how deeply we have all consumed the toxins around us, until as Kathryn describes herself as an industrial waste site. "I am both who and where I've come from." Bodies, she says are environments.
Her thoughts that his disease could have been accelerated by lived experiences actually triggered LEAD Agency over 20 years ago to conduct a Health Survey to find out if living here is dangerous to our health, and reminded me that it is time to take to the streets with that and a couple of other surveys this summer to ask you questions you long to be asked.
Kathryn appeared one hot afternoon last year when we discovered the first 2 child-made dams on Tar Creek and jumped in with my son and I to remove some of the stones to allow water to flow more freely.
Since then she has been organizing events bringing people together in Tulsa first to focus on Tar Creek and secondly to hear the poems of the incarcerated men and women and to meet the two women who have organized the programs that bring poetry behind bars.
One of the last pages of Ground Glass has a truly remarkable statement: A percentage of the sale of this book will support work being done by the LEAD Agency and the Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution. She goes on to say, "Both organizations take action to counter environmental hazards and stand up for healthy water, air and environmental justice through education, advocacy and collaboration."
Now, that will throw you. What a gracious way to honor the work LEAD Agency does and to help us keep doing it.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
It has begun. A real summer. Like the ones we remember, those hot and drier days that barely cool even deep in the night. These are the days we get through once we get the rhythm going. Starting early, drinking much more WATER and seeking every bit of shade. Our cars dive into patches of shade even if we know the shade will move during the day. We discover the cooling value of trees again and vow to plant more when the ground is not hard as concrete as it is now.
We watch the weather reports for the relative humidity because it is how hot we know it will feel when we are out in it, while always listening for the words announcing the dreaded microcystin or commonly known as blue green algae (BGA) with its distinct color and texture.
It was detected July 6 on Grand Lake in the Ketchum cove. The BGA bloom could be seen extending from near the Hammerhead Marina boat ramp eastward toward Colony Cove according to GRDA. I wonder if it might have also been seen during our 4th holiday but the announcement saved for day after reporting to SAVE the lake tourism from the mass exodus the lake experienced when it occurred right before a previous July 4th weekend. THAT notice was handled by the state health department because is it a health emergency requiring immediate action. BUT all things can become political?
Yes, the responsibility of both detecting and making the public announcements were removed from the health department. But if you search those words on the Oklahoma Department of Health site you will find a great deal of information on health and environmental effects and impacts. You just might not find it in time. The state of Oklahoma blew its responsibility to protect us.
Pay attention this substance has color that grabs you. It is mind-blowing color and a texture you must not engage, don't drive a boat through it, even the spray is dangerous when air borne and inhaled. Your Senator Inhofe dove himself into it a few years ago and caused a holiday shut down and the state of Oklahoma figured out how to keep their lakes open for business in case it happened again. And it has. Maybe that is part of the reason he wants the lake deeper? Thinking delusion is the solution?
The other thing that has happened this week all over the United States, carried out by the Waterkeeper Alliance was the largest most extensive PFAS monitoring study ever conducted in this country to analyze samples taken simultaneously in surface waters. LEAD Agency's Grand Riverkeeper, Martin Lively and the Tar Creekkeeper, Rebecca Jim, both walked and boated to collect their samples for the study. So what is PFAS and why would we want to know if it can be detected in our waterbodies?
We know about bacteria and even what color it can be, but PFAS Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent organic contaminants that are pervasive in our lives and end up in water supplies in the US. They are mobile and make their way to drinking water resources, our rivers and lakes.
This stuff is everywhere. You feel them every time you handle a receipt from a cash purchase, and those grease-resistant papers, fast food containers/wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes, and candy wrappers are coated with PFAS.
The complex chemistry used in producing these compounds makes detecting them difficult, and parceling out this and that to see what health impacts they are producing in us is still a developing story. But they are persistent and they will be with us and in us. What Waterkeepers are going to provide is information to our watersheds that, "we too are at risk" the PFAS are here, or wouldn't it be a gift to find they are not here?
This area, our people have enough KNOWN contaminants to deal with, we don't need more. What can you do to reduce your exposures in one of the largest superfund sites in the country?
Make sure you have had your yard tested now by DEQ for lead, easy with a phone call to 800-522-0206. Get your children 6 years old and younger tested for lead poisoning. Wet dust inside your home. Give the pregnant women a break and vacuum for them. Check the fish consumption guides for the number of local fish you can eat a month due to lead and mercury. Gather blackberries along somebody else's creek not our Tar Creek. Keep your kids at the splash pad and the big pool at Riverview and out of Tar Creek for yet another summer.
Lots of don'ts. Do honor water as life, use it to keep you cool and hydrated. Find the shade and share what you can.
Respectfully submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
We watch the weather reports for the relative humidity because it is how hot we know it will feel when we are out in it, while always listening for the words announcing the dreaded microcystin or commonly known as blue green algae (BGA) with its distinct color and texture.
It was detected July 6 on Grand Lake in the Ketchum cove. The BGA bloom could be seen extending from near the Hammerhead Marina boat ramp eastward toward Colony Cove according to GRDA. I wonder if it might have also been seen during our 4th holiday but the announcement saved for day after reporting to SAVE the lake tourism from the mass exodus the lake experienced when it occurred right before a previous July 4th weekend. THAT notice was handled by the state health department because is it a health emergency requiring immediate action. BUT all things can become political?
Yes, the responsibility of both detecting and making the public announcements were removed from the health department. But if you search those words on the Oklahoma Department of Health site you will find a great deal of information on health and environmental effects and impacts. You just might not find it in time. The state of Oklahoma blew its responsibility to protect us.
Pay attention this substance has color that grabs you. It is mind-blowing color and a texture you must not engage, don't drive a boat through it, even the spray is dangerous when air borne and inhaled. Your Senator Inhofe dove himself into it a few years ago and caused a holiday shut down and the state of Oklahoma figured out how to keep their lakes open for business in case it happened again. And it has. Maybe that is part of the reason he wants the lake deeper? Thinking delusion is the solution?
The other thing that has happened this week all over the United States, carried out by the Waterkeeper Alliance was the largest most extensive PFAS monitoring study ever conducted in this country to analyze samples taken simultaneously in surface waters. LEAD Agency's Grand Riverkeeper, Martin Lively and the Tar Creekkeeper, Rebecca Jim, both walked and boated to collect their samples for the study. So what is PFAS and why would we want to know if it can be detected in our waterbodies?
We know about bacteria and even what color it can be, but PFAS Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent organic contaminants that are pervasive in our lives and end up in water supplies in the US. They are mobile and make their way to drinking water resources, our rivers and lakes.
This stuff is everywhere. You feel them every time you handle a receipt from a cash purchase, and those grease-resistant papers, fast food containers/wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes, and candy wrappers are coated with PFAS.
The complex chemistry used in producing these compounds makes detecting them difficult, and parceling out this and that to see what health impacts they are producing in us is still a developing story. But they are persistent and they will be with us and in us. What Waterkeepers are going to provide is information to our watersheds that, "we too are at risk" the PFAS are here, or wouldn't it be a gift to find they are not here?
This area, our people have enough KNOWN contaminants to deal with, we don't need more. What can you do to reduce your exposures in one of the largest superfund sites in the country?
Make sure you have had your yard tested now by DEQ for lead, easy with a phone call to 800-522-0206. Get your children 6 years old and younger tested for lead poisoning. Wet dust inside your home. Give the pregnant women a break and vacuum for them. Check the fish consumption guides for the number of local fish you can eat a month due to lead and mercury. Gather blackberries along somebody else's creek not our Tar Creek. Keep your kids at the splash pad and the big pool at Riverview and out of Tar Creek for yet another summer.
Lots of don'ts. Do honor water as life, use it to keep you cool and hydrated. Find the shade and share what you can.
Respectfully submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
It isn’t a place or a brand new museum. You don’t go there to explore. Perhaps you might think of it as a way to explain us. Who we are, or how we have come to be how we are. What has made us be sick or well, may be much more complicated than relying on our zip codes and race and age.
What if there was a map of sorts attached to us, way before we were born, perhaps reaching us even before our mothers were born and identifiers with a substance, date and place were paintballed on us invisibly all through our lives, always with the place so we become a map-maker of the places we have been and when. And then that map could be overlaid with the industries, brownfields, superfund sites and worksites we lived by, traveled near, went to school next to or worked and when. And then the layer of our feelings and lived experiences, from joys to traumas, with special attention given to the periods we might be carrying our offspring so that those might then transfer to the little ones at birth.
These are the visions of the people I was sitting near and hearing these last 2 days in New York City. These are not comic book writers or makers of future movies. These are some of the most brilliant medical doctors, esteemed neuroscientists, epidemiologists and researchers in the country. They have tired of trying to figure us out within the 15 minutes they have in the examine room with us. What makes us sick? How can they find out? They are tired of guessing and trying to find funding to research the one shiny popular element to see if it is the one. When we are actually a living petri dish our whole lives being exposed to every thing we have eaten, breathed in and worn or swam in, all of it. Do they add it together and then divide by what and create the formula to provide the what did this to us?
One of the esteemed men knows us. He spent at least 10 years of his life knowing our mothers and your children and through the lens of a project investigator monitoring over 700 of our babies and detecting the metals we know are here that we go to bed with each night. The heavy metals that made paychecks for men in our county and wealth for those who invested to make it. But he couldn’t also measure the rest of the exposures they may have experienced in their short lives, the benzene, aspergillius fumagatus or asbestos and styrene that could have been complicating the way our metals whirled around their bloodstream.
Research is precise. You ask a question and find that answer or not. But not all the answers come because not all the questions can be asked in the funding cycle he and fellow truth seekers sought.
These frustrations but then add to this the pressure to find those answers by people like me and from each mother he faced and each child born to this place or the multiple other places he and this room full of truth seekers went during their careers.
And that might be what brought them together as one to think through the next way they do their work. We will be better for it. I would give them my addresses: where I live now, the places and dates of the befores, and they can have it. Track me, allow them to track you. Sign up when they develop the permission to access what made us this way. Let them have the keys to the answers WE WANT.
These minds are spinning and seeking these answers. What brought them to this quest is and has been US and of course Robert and Rosalind Wright who are co-directors of the Institute for Exposomic Research, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
They were listening all the time. And that awesome acknowledgment brings tears to me now. You were heard. Your suffering noted, your child’s struggles tally marked, with each data point now a nudge to all of these people to work faster, smarter and get to it now.
They know you are waiting. And we deserve the answers from people we know cared all that time and didn’t have the method, the process to figure us out.
They are on it. You really did matter to them. Remember the Exposome when you tune in to Science Friday one afternoon on NPR. You inspired it. The look from your eyes and the eyes of all the mothers who had children in the MATCH Project and other research projects around the country, forced these researchers to find new ways to give us answers. You did this.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
As an environmental activist, my life has focus on air, water and soil. Each are gifts from the Creator. All elements we need for survival. To these I add the element of work for, with it we are connected to these, often immersed, sometimes impacted in ways we learn to live with, and for some our lives shortened because of our relationship.
When I wake up in the morning, hearing the birds, feeling a gentle breeze, walking out in the yard, knowing the soil beneath my feet has never been plowed, mined or in some way disturbed, no chemicals added or lying in a perched aquifer below lingering for decades. I take a breath, deeply understanding in what I inhale has no heavy metals, no styrene, no excessive molds, smelling only the fragrances of the wildflowers currently in bloom or on these warm days the delight of the pines reminding me of summers in the Black Hills or Rocky Mountains.
These privileges experienced every single day of my life get me up and put me in a good way to head to work to fight to make a wounded place and her people get just one morning wake up knowing their lives might also be free of man-made harms.
As Maryann Hurtt would say in her poem The Tar Creek Monster, "I didn't always look this way." My life's work, first as Indian Counselor for the Miami secondary schools and since then as executive director for the only non-profit organization in northeast Oklahoma dealing with environmental issues you may have seen me age before your eyes.
It has all been honorable work. Knowing we and the many others and the agencies who stepped in to address childhood lead poisoning, we have collectively reduced the number of children who are poisoned in their very own yards, school playgrounds and parks because we paid attention and pushed as a crowd for it.
Now, I am calling more of you back into play and asking you to want a different morning for them and yourselves. I want you to know what it is like to breath clean air, have safe soils in your yards and have work that is safe. And water running down Tar Creek safe enough you will encourage your kids to join you wadding in it these hot summer days.
No, you probably didn't wake up this morning thinking this was the day you would become an environmental activist, but you could give it a try.
You can dangle your feet in it by adding your name on the WE HAVE FLOODED ENOUGH WE WON'T TAKE IT ANYMORE signs you will see around town (if you haven't already!); you can drop by the LEAD Agency office and come in, make some buttons to wear DON'T FLOOD US; you can sign a letter asking federal agencies to get their act together and work for US (we can provide the letter). What else? If you like being outside, join a Clean up on Tar Creek or with a fellow activist at Riverview Park.
We are developing a STREAM TEAM, join it and we will be taking Tar Creek's "temperature" once a month. Be a Lay-Health Advisor, teaching your friends how to protect their children from lead poisoning. What about using your own skills to help us develop these materials with these messages. We need scientists, biologists and map makers, but also artists, poets, musicians to make all this hard, scary stuff ease into our lives a bit more gently.
You can be an environmental activist right there in your own home. You can call DEQ and get your yard tested for lead for free and made right if it needs it for free, then you can wake up like me knowing that part that place is safe. Maybe you remember KINGS X from your childhood. Your yard can be it. And you can make sure of it. Start small, go full blast. Give it a try, this place needs a whole bunch of us doing this work if we want to make sure the work gets done.
Keep your eyes open, notice your surroundings. Observe differences. Memorize the Hotline for DEQ 800-522-0206. The cool part of that is you can do it anonymously. BUT if you want to know what you saw, what happened to the who that was responsible, you can give your name and address and you will get a letter telling you.
Let's get this collective goal. It is not wrong to want what I have been waking up to all these years. Clean air, soil and water. I am privileged by where I live and to have the honor to work in a place with people who deserve a clean environment.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
When I wake up in the morning, hearing the birds, feeling a gentle breeze, walking out in the yard, knowing the soil beneath my feet has never been plowed, mined or in some way disturbed, no chemicals added or lying in a perched aquifer below lingering for decades. I take a breath, deeply understanding in what I inhale has no heavy metals, no styrene, no excessive molds, smelling only the fragrances of the wildflowers currently in bloom or on these warm days the delight of the pines reminding me of summers in the Black Hills or Rocky Mountains.
These privileges experienced every single day of my life get me up and put me in a good way to head to work to fight to make a wounded place and her people get just one morning wake up knowing their lives might also be free of man-made harms.
As Maryann Hurtt would say in her poem The Tar Creek Monster, "I didn't always look this way." My life's work, first as Indian Counselor for the Miami secondary schools and since then as executive director for the only non-profit organization in northeast Oklahoma dealing with environmental issues you may have seen me age before your eyes.
It has all been honorable work. Knowing we and the many others and the agencies who stepped in to address childhood lead poisoning, we have collectively reduced the number of children who are poisoned in their very own yards, school playgrounds and parks because we paid attention and pushed as a crowd for it.
Now, I am calling more of you back into play and asking you to want a different morning for them and yourselves. I want you to know what it is like to breath clean air, have safe soils in your yards and have work that is safe. And water running down Tar Creek safe enough you will encourage your kids to join you wadding in it these hot summer days.
No, you probably didn't wake up this morning thinking this was the day you would become an environmental activist, but you could give it a try.
You can dangle your feet in it by adding your name on the WE HAVE FLOODED ENOUGH WE WON'T TAKE IT ANYMORE signs you will see around town (if you haven't already!); you can drop by the LEAD Agency office and come in, make some buttons to wear DON'T FLOOD US; you can sign a letter asking federal agencies to get their act together and work for US (we can provide the letter). What else? If you like being outside, join a Clean up on Tar Creek or with a fellow activist at Riverview Park.
We are developing a STREAM TEAM, join it and we will be taking Tar Creek's "temperature" once a month. Be a Lay-Health Advisor, teaching your friends how to protect their children from lead poisoning. What about using your own skills to help us develop these materials with these messages. We need scientists, biologists and map makers, but also artists, poets, musicians to make all this hard, scary stuff ease into our lives a bit more gently.
You can be an environmental activist right there in your own home. You can call DEQ and get your yard tested for lead for free and made right if it needs it for free, then you can wake up like me knowing that part that place is safe. Maybe you remember KINGS X from your childhood. Your yard can be it. And you can make sure of it. Start small, go full blast. Give it a try, this place needs a whole bunch of us doing this work if we want to make sure the work gets done.
Keep your eyes open, notice your surroundings. Observe differences. Memorize the Hotline for DEQ 800-522-0206. The cool part of that is you can do it anonymously. BUT if you want to know what you saw, what happened to the who that was responsible, you can give your name and address and you will get a letter telling you.
Let's get this collective goal. It is not wrong to want what I have been waking up to all these years. Clean air, soil and water. I am privileged by where I live and to have the honor to work in a place with people who deserve a clean environment.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
There are take aways.
There are impressions.
There are moments.
There was silence.
The anticipated rage wasn't there.
The implication is then neither was hope.
The fight has almost been whipped out of the public.
The belief in right over wrong didn't come to that meeting.
But it must be found. Defeat is not an option.
Miami is in the fight of its life.
And everyone must choose a side and become active participants in this fight.
There are wrongs and absolutely every single person has been wronged by the dam caused flooding that occurs here even if not a drop of water found its way into your house or business.
The floods here have changed this community into a cowed and beat set of victims.
Not only does the town flood, but it gets Toxic Flooded when our superfund named creek does part of the flooding.
And then there is BF Goodrich and that other problem of having a reputation of sometimes just being down right stinky.
This is a public that feels defeated and is just riding this all out in hopes it will just fix itself.
The belief of being a winner, and having a happy, safe, dry place to raise kids has diminished.
Public pride is at its lowest.
And I saw that, no, actually I heard it. I heard it with the absence of rage for the most part that occurred at the Town Hall on flooding that Friday night.
The anticipated flood of people to standup and queue for the public participation segment and the rules to regulate the rowdy crowd were over-kill because the silence was almost deafening and the long pregnant pauses between those who did stand to speak an opinion or to ask a question I am sure surprised those on the stage. Several mustered themselves to the edge of the stage and spoke but the word that became the moment that rings in my head and will not stop is minor. The woman who passionately stated her flood was not MINOR and ended stating a determination to be out there in front with the team fighting.
Representatives of the tribes most impacted by the flooding sat near the front of the audience with a pointed question and comment from the most downstream tribe.
Not present with us was the Senior Australian of the year, Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, who has said of her people "we are river people." Aren't we river people too? My people today she explained recognize and experience in quietness the great Life-Giving Spirit, God’s presence.
She explained that her ancestors understood their environment and use silence to become replenished which then brings them to be resilient. The silence you may have been exhibiting has prepared you to be able to take on what comes next. You are ready. We all are.
Also sitting at the back of the Coleman was the vice-president of LEAD Agency, Grace Goodeagle, our own elder stateswoman and former Chairwoman of the Quapaw Tribe, knowing deeply the connection we each feel to our environment and how when it is harmed, we are all harmed.
Dam caused flooding. These words proved what that crowd knew to be happening but the repetition of that phrase and the mantra that became, persists in my mind.
It ought to become a song and our message blaring on the radio as the city buckles into the fight for its life.
The life guards came to that meeting. Almost legendary Larry Bork actually stood before the public and clearly told us all who was to blame. We were right. We have been right all along. But right can't win by itself. Right needs a good lawyer and Miami and the 456 plaintiffs have a good one. Jan. 2022 D.C. Circuit’s remand stating, “…the evidence that Pensacola Dam’s operation has caused the flooding in the City is powerful.” This definitely demonstrates even the courts know right from wrong.
Get on board. Clear your throat. Write those songs. Get on the same page. There is a fight and you must win. You have been right all along to feel rage. We are all on the same page. Page and rage do rhyme.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
There are impressions.
There are moments.
There was silence.
The anticipated rage wasn't there.
The implication is then neither was hope.
The fight has almost been whipped out of the public.
The belief in right over wrong didn't come to that meeting.
But it must be found. Defeat is not an option.
Miami is in the fight of its life.
And everyone must choose a side and become active participants in this fight.
There are wrongs and absolutely every single person has been wronged by the dam caused flooding that occurs here even if not a drop of water found its way into your house or business.
The floods here have changed this community into a cowed and beat set of victims.
Not only does the town flood, but it gets Toxic Flooded when our superfund named creek does part of the flooding.
And then there is BF Goodrich and that other problem of having a reputation of sometimes just being down right stinky.
This is a public that feels defeated and is just riding this all out in hopes it will just fix itself.
The belief of being a winner, and having a happy, safe, dry place to raise kids has diminished.
Public pride is at its lowest.
And I saw that, no, actually I heard it. I heard it with the absence of rage for the most part that occurred at the Town Hall on flooding that Friday night.
The anticipated flood of people to standup and queue for the public participation segment and the rules to regulate the rowdy crowd were over-kill because the silence was almost deafening and the long pregnant pauses between those who did stand to speak an opinion or to ask a question I am sure surprised those on the stage. Several mustered themselves to the edge of the stage and spoke but the word that became the moment that rings in my head and will not stop is minor. The woman who passionately stated her flood was not MINOR and ended stating a determination to be out there in front with the team fighting.
Representatives of the tribes most impacted by the flooding sat near the front of the audience with a pointed question and comment from the most downstream tribe.
Not present with us was the Senior Australian of the year, Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, who has said of her people "we are river people." Aren't we river people too? My people today she explained recognize and experience in quietness the great Life-Giving Spirit, God’s presence.
She explained that her ancestors understood their environment and use silence to become replenished which then brings them to be resilient. The silence you may have been exhibiting has prepared you to be able to take on what comes next. You are ready. We all are.
Also sitting at the back of the Coleman was the vice-president of LEAD Agency, Grace Goodeagle, our own elder stateswoman and former Chairwoman of the Quapaw Tribe, knowing deeply the connection we each feel to our environment and how when it is harmed, we are all harmed.
Dam caused flooding. These words proved what that crowd knew to be happening but the repetition of that phrase and the mantra that became, persists in my mind.
It ought to become a song and our message blaring on the radio as the city buckles into the fight for its life.
The life guards came to that meeting. Almost legendary Larry Bork actually stood before the public and clearly told us all who was to blame. We were right. We have been right all along. But right can't win by itself. Right needs a good lawyer and Miami and the 456 plaintiffs have a good one. Jan. 2022 D.C. Circuit’s remand stating, “…the evidence that Pensacola Dam’s operation has caused the flooding in the City is powerful.” This definitely demonstrates even the courts know right from wrong.
Get on board. Clear your throat. Write those songs. Get on the same page. There is a fight and you must win. You have been right all along to feel rage. We are all on the same page. Page and rage do rhyme.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
When we prick our finger, when we scrape our knee, when we experience a bump in the night and see our bruise in the morning. The evidence of the wounds are visible to us, to others.
But when we experience loss, what we feel is not visible to the others. When our property is damaged by a flood or repeating floods to the extent it is determined to be no longer inhabitable and can no longer be permitted to rebuild, our visible proof of our existence in that place is removed. Our memories of the lives lived there will be viable only in our minds and the memories of our family because many of our treasured photographs will have long been lost to the rancid waters that ruined them.
Trauma is not always addressed in this country. It is invisible, causing the victims no limp, no clues to others of the horror or suffering individuals may have experienced and carry with them as they walk or muddle through the chores of daily living.
For a community that has experienced a disaster, or repetitive disasters I believe we can have a group experienced trauma. I would venture to say a community and her members can experience PTSD episodes when certain triggers occur. For Miami and her surrounding out of city limits neighbors in "hoods" not incorporated into the city and those with the rural lifestyles associated with "country living" some of the triggers of PTSD may begin with a simple banner running across the bottom of the TV screen while watching their favorite comedy programs. Another is the radar in a weather report indicating rain storms approaching. The simple sound of the first raindrops hitting the roof in the night can wake a person with dread and removes the possibility of returning to restful sleep. The other trigger is the term "Flood Watch" announced via media sources. And the alarm on the cell phones blaring the warning. And who would have ever thought that could be a thing?
The numbers with the predicted crest on the Neosho and the timing of that crest trigger episodes of PTSD, but also trigger action. The plans are set, maybe not in writing, or posted on the walls of the kitchen by the backdoor. People kickstart themselves into action to save what they know will be most of risk
Curbs and driveways, maybe partial sidewalks are all that remain from whole neighborhoods or the seemingly random vacant lots lying as they do between still standing homes, it is only when you step back to view the block you can notice the land was not flat where those missing homes were actually built, as the land lays and with the ease of a gentle rolling landscape that allows our rains to flow to the river through millennium.
A city has a great deal of responsibility to keep watch over her citizens and one of these respected duties requires the city to issue permits to build to new developments or in the case after a flood, they take on the role of decider of the future of standing structures to allow a re-build or to take it down as no longer habitable. If we look back at past decisions of housing that was allowed to build close to or in old established floodplains, we can overlook or accept those decisions made back then. They could not have known the lake and the river would silt in and push backwater in on those homes. We know that can and has happened now. We know that more will come because Kansas is still sending her plowed ground down and into our river and filling up our lake. Tar Creek is sending down more of the chat piles resting in her floodplain mixing as it does into the lake bed and causing those fish advisories for her lead to continue for the last 2 decades. And we all know the climate is changing because the rains are more intense and the states west of us are in an unending drought from lack of rain.
These raw feelings also include anger. This is aimed at politicians past and present, aimed at regulators, decision-makers, to God, herself. But there is plenty of rage at mistreatment, the unfair delay of dealing with past wrongs over the agencies with power during a flood. These are face-less entities, but those feeling this rage are not face-less. These are our neighbors, our friends, the people on the pew in church. These are rows of wronged people who long to be treated with respect and helped.
There is a cost to flooding that is not measured by dollars and wealth, but in loss of dignity loss of heirlooms and the general loss of peace of mind and trust in the way the world is and how life should be lived.
Value yourself and know that your voices should be heard. The silence is deafening around here. The injustice so real but having lived it for these decades I have learned neither I or any single agency can read your minds. What lays in there, those feelings you have carried are real and yours to share and the times have come.
There are some actions you can take, you can stand and be heard, you can sign our WE ARE NOT TAKING IT ANYMORE cards and you can send an email or sign a letter you can mail a postcard you can wear a button you can demand clean water that will not FLOOD YOU. You and your feelings matter.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
The book I hadn't written had a chapter that ended only yesterday. Themed as a love story, compiled by the chapters of couples who lived by and with Tar Creek running through their lives. The titles of each chapter bring back to me the lives of people who allowed me to understand the deep and lasting loves for each other that intimately in some way tied their lives to what we have come to know as Tar Creek or her superfund site.
What day was it, when I first met Wanda Couch?
There was a need to put aside fears of inadequacy and walk up to the audacious set of double doors and knock. Having no answer, I knocked a number of times but did not pound before I heard off in the distance the padding of feet on a hard smooth surface. As the footsteps got closer to the door, a woman's voice asked who was there. I replied with my name. A woman repeated my name, adding only, "the infamous woman."
She opened the door and it was like meeting a person I had longed to know but never had.
I explained to her what had brought me to her door. William Andrews who had been working with USGS in the 1990's had done some testing in Tar Creek very close to her current property line and students from Emporia State University wanted to do a follow-up study at that same site and they were requesting permission and I was there asking Wanda for those students and she said yes.
And today while at the Farmer's Market, another friend called to give me the news that she had passed away the day before. It was like the lights went out all over town. Surely, you all felt it, a light with such passion and love of life, when it is relinquished we will find the world is truly different.
We had a poster on our table entitled: We flooded enough, we won't take it anymore. The page was not fully filled out leaving room for yet more signatures when moments after that phone call, a pair of women stopped to read it and paused when reading Wanda's name and perhaps cautiously pointed out that she had died only the day before, to inform me if I hadn't known. They joined in signing and their names and all the others we have gathered over the last 2 years will be on display, you can bet at the Town Hall.
Wanda named me the "Infamous Woman" never knowing that the title would end up being woven into a song sung off-Broadway by the young playwright and song writers who came to meet her and enjoy the exuberant joy she shared with them.
To me she was the epitome of cool. And what I was later allowed to know was how long and how deeply she was loved, by her daughters and by her husband Jim who had built her a palace over looking that free flowing stream.
The 24th annual Tar Creek Conference will be held this year in October. The first one that was held brought speakers from around the country so we deemed it a National Conference and that has been its designation all these years. One of the speakers who was invited came from the Harvard School of Public Health and we anticipated his topic would be lead poisoning and the long term effects both to children and to the adults they grow up to be. But that is not what he talked about. He was looking at new research that was being conducted about the relationship of heavy metals, like the ones we have in abundance here in the Tar Creek Superfund Site: lead, manganese, iron and their relationship with conditions that manifest in the older adults, in particular, Parkinson's disease, which can also be hereditary.
This evening, with the news of Wanda Couch's death, I longed to find the long lost notes from Dr. Robert Wright's presentation, there at the NEO auditorium, explaining as a researcher the cold facts of the progression of that disease and feeling he was totally missing the boat with us and OUR people. Parkinson's? Who gets that here?
We left it on the list when LEAD Agency conducted a health survey with 587 households in Miami and the mining towns north of Miami in Ottawa County. We didn't expect to find Parkinson's. But we did.
There are serious issues that we cannot ignore. What lies in our dust, what flows down our creek, what floods our yards, fields and homes is not only water, but contains metals we need to pay attention to.
Though these chapters are not yet put to paper I hope they will come to inspire us to seek and not settle for a lesser, perhaps easier life, but to follow those true loves and show the world these relationships are real and inspire future generations to keep looking for real love as it can exist, I have had the pleasure to know this to be true.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
What day was it, when I first met Wanda Couch?
There was a need to put aside fears of inadequacy and walk up to the audacious set of double doors and knock. Having no answer, I knocked a number of times but did not pound before I heard off in the distance the padding of feet on a hard smooth surface. As the footsteps got closer to the door, a woman's voice asked who was there. I replied with my name. A woman repeated my name, adding only, "the infamous woman."
She opened the door and it was like meeting a person I had longed to know but never had.
I explained to her what had brought me to her door. William Andrews who had been working with USGS in the 1990's had done some testing in Tar Creek very close to her current property line and students from Emporia State University wanted to do a follow-up study at that same site and they were requesting permission and I was there asking Wanda for those students and she said yes.
And today while at the Farmer's Market, another friend called to give me the news that she had passed away the day before. It was like the lights went out all over town. Surely, you all felt it, a light with such passion and love of life, when it is relinquished we will find the world is truly different.
We had a poster on our table entitled: We flooded enough, we won't take it anymore. The page was not fully filled out leaving room for yet more signatures when moments after that phone call, a pair of women stopped to read it and paused when reading Wanda's name and perhaps cautiously pointed out that she had died only the day before, to inform me if I hadn't known. They joined in signing and their names and all the others we have gathered over the last 2 years will be on display, you can bet at the Town Hall.
Wanda named me the "Infamous Woman" never knowing that the title would end up being woven into a song sung off-Broadway by the young playwright and song writers who came to meet her and enjoy the exuberant joy she shared with them.
To me she was the epitome of cool. And what I was later allowed to know was how long and how deeply she was loved, by her daughters and by her husband Jim who had built her a palace over looking that free flowing stream.
The 24th annual Tar Creek Conference will be held this year in October. The first one that was held brought speakers from around the country so we deemed it a National Conference and that has been its designation all these years. One of the speakers who was invited came from the Harvard School of Public Health and we anticipated his topic would be lead poisoning and the long term effects both to children and to the adults they grow up to be. But that is not what he talked about. He was looking at new research that was being conducted about the relationship of heavy metals, like the ones we have in abundance here in the Tar Creek Superfund Site: lead, manganese, iron and their relationship with conditions that manifest in the older adults, in particular, Parkinson's disease, which can also be hereditary.
This evening, with the news of Wanda Couch's death, I longed to find the long lost notes from Dr. Robert Wright's presentation, there at the NEO auditorium, explaining as a researcher the cold facts of the progression of that disease and feeling he was totally missing the boat with us and OUR people. Parkinson's? Who gets that here?
We left it on the list when LEAD Agency conducted a health survey with 587 households in Miami and the mining towns north of Miami in Ottawa County. We didn't expect to find Parkinson's. But we did.
There are serious issues that we cannot ignore. What lies in our dust, what flows down our creek, what floods our yards, fields and homes is not only water, but contains metals we need to pay attention to.
Though these chapters are not yet put to paper I hope they will come to inspire us to seek and not settle for a lesser, perhaps easier life, but to follow those true loves and show the world these relationships are real and inspire future generations to keep looking for real love as it can exist, I have had the pleasure to know this to be true.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
The ground is saturated and the gardens lay waiting to dry out and be what they were planned to be.
Maybe we all hope to be what we were planned to be. What is that? I wasn’t ever meant to be a Boss or run a non-profit.
I wanted to be an artist. So what makes us change our path? And stay on that path for the decades we tread? I learned that listening was a gift so counseling came easy and became my life's first career. Speaking up and out was hard but necessary, for wrongs cannot be addressed without acknowledgement and this community, this corner of northeast Oklahoma had plenty of wrongs shout-worthy. Which is how LEAD Agency came to exist.
And that is why a post on a Facebook announcing a Town Hall got my attention this week.
We all got invited to the one the City officials are hosting on June 10 for those interested in the flooding issues in and round the City of Miami. Town Halls are the way people get to meet people in power and share ideas and voice concerns and ask the questions that lay with us. This is the opportunity marked on my calendar.
For nearly 2 decades the City has been in a fight of its life. It isn't cheap to win. It takes getting the legal team and keeping them for the long haul. NO MATTER WHAT. It means paying the big bucks to have the scientists needed to muscle through the technical material presented over the last few years during the relicensing procedure and be able to dispute their work. The City got both legal and technical experts to fight for Miami and it cost money. The way I see it, pay up or fail. And they have done it. City council meetings followed by the next, have requests for payment amounts that must be scary for a council member to see. The City gets this chance. That's it.
And at the Town Hall meeting we will get to meet their lawyers and the scientists and hear what has happened, what they have learned and ask questions. That's how a Town Hall works. They are there for us. It is our turn.
I am excited the City has called for one and hope this will be the first of many to come.
This week the Department of Environmental Quality announced they are going to begin the process to remediate the benzene on the south side of the former BF Goodrich plant. I called both the DEQ and the lawyers who represent Michelin’s interests asking for a Town Hall to alert and educate us all on the process that will be used here. People should have the right to know what is happening and how their safety is being protected during the process, more so than just in a press release.
The procedure they will be using has a name and an abbreviation: multi-phase extraction/air sparging MPE/AS remediation system. Through the years at our annual Tar Creek Conferences BF Goodrich has been on our agenda and this system was discussed as a method that was being considered and now it seems it has been chosen.
"MPE involves the pumping, extraction, and treatment of both ground water and subsurface soil vapor which contain mineral spirits and benzene. Air sparging, which is the injection of air, will provide oxygen to the subsurface to promote the removal of mineral spirits and benzene and enhance biodegradation of the ground water plume."
I will be calling the City to ask if they might put in a word to DEQ about their hosting a Town Hall on air sparging for us. A citizen who is informed can begin to deal with the uncertainties. What could be more unsettling than knowing there is benzene beneath the ground? Maybe the uncertainty of the safety of removing it.
As May ends with these colder nights, the heaters in our homes have been kicking on. For me those sounds are the sound of the Blackberry Winter. Coming just as the blackberry vines are loaded with blossoms, cold wet windy weather can knock some of the blossoms off so the vines aren't overloaded. Until the Town Hall on June 10, the ground will be drying out, new beds constructed, raised beds filled and planted and my thoughts go to body armor and where 18 year olds go to buy it and why on earth they would need it.
Growing up in Texas, Uvalde was never a town I visited or one our local high school played against in football. But it’s brown skinned kids are part of your visual memory now. Body Armor. Now that is a thing Congress could settle in on isn’t it? What law abiding citizen needs body armor? Why is it even for sale?
Last days of school have been the memories we all hold dear. Seeing the people in your classes for the last time. Here is hoping there will be a lot of Town Halls this summer about this issue in our country.
Maybe we all hope to be what we were planned to be. What is that? I wasn’t ever meant to be a Boss or run a non-profit.
I wanted to be an artist. So what makes us change our path? And stay on that path for the decades we tread? I learned that listening was a gift so counseling came easy and became my life's first career. Speaking up and out was hard but necessary, for wrongs cannot be addressed without acknowledgement and this community, this corner of northeast Oklahoma had plenty of wrongs shout-worthy. Which is how LEAD Agency came to exist.
And that is why a post on a Facebook announcing a Town Hall got my attention this week.
We all got invited to the one the City officials are hosting on June 10 for those interested in the flooding issues in and round the City of Miami. Town Halls are the way people get to meet people in power and share ideas and voice concerns and ask the questions that lay with us. This is the opportunity marked on my calendar.
For nearly 2 decades the City has been in a fight of its life. It isn't cheap to win. It takes getting the legal team and keeping them for the long haul. NO MATTER WHAT. It means paying the big bucks to have the scientists needed to muscle through the technical material presented over the last few years during the relicensing procedure and be able to dispute their work. The City got both legal and technical experts to fight for Miami and it cost money. The way I see it, pay up or fail. And they have done it. City council meetings followed by the next, have requests for payment amounts that must be scary for a council member to see. The City gets this chance. That's it.
And at the Town Hall meeting we will get to meet their lawyers and the scientists and hear what has happened, what they have learned and ask questions. That's how a Town Hall works. They are there for us. It is our turn.
I am excited the City has called for one and hope this will be the first of many to come.
This week the Department of Environmental Quality announced they are going to begin the process to remediate the benzene on the south side of the former BF Goodrich plant. I called both the DEQ and the lawyers who represent Michelin’s interests asking for a Town Hall to alert and educate us all on the process that will be used here. People should have the right to know what is happening and how their safety is being protected during the process, more so than just in a press release.
The procedure they will be using has a name and an abbreviation: multi-phase extraction/air sparging MPE/AS remediation system. Through the years at our annual Tar Creek Conferences BF Goodrich has been on our agenda and this system was discussed as a method that was being considered and now it seems it has been chosen.
"MPE involves the pumping, extraction, and treatment of both ground water and subsurface soil vapor which contain mineral spirits and benzene. Air sparging, which is the injection of air, will provide oxygen to the subsurface to promote the removal of mineral spirits and benzene and enhance biodegradation of the ground water plume."
I will be calling the City to ask if they might put in a word to DEQ about their hosting a Town Hall on air sparging for us. A citizen who is informed can begin to deal with the uncertainties. What could be more unsettling than knowing there is benzene beneath the ground? Maybe the uncertainty of the safety of removing it.
As May ends with these colder nights, the heaters in our homes have been kicking on. For me those sounds are the sound of the Blackberry Winter. Coming just as the blackberry vines are loaded with blossoms, cold wet windy weather can knock some of the blossoms off so the vines aren't overloaded. Until the Town Hall on June 10, the ground will be drying out, new beds constructed, raised beds filled and planted and my thoughts go to body armor and where 18 year olds go to buy it and why on earth they would need it.
Growing up in Texas, Uvalde was never a town I visited or one our local high school played against in football. But it’s brown skinned kids are part of your visual memory now. Body Armor. Now that is a thing Congress could settle in on isn’t it? What law abiding citizen needs body armor? Why is it even for sale?
Last days of school have been the memories we all hold dear. Seeing the people in your classes for the last time. Here is hoping there will be a lot of Town Halls this summer about this issue in our country.
Rebecca Jim
Rebecca is the Executive Director of LEAD Agency and one of its founding members. She also serves as the Tar Creekkeeper with the Waterkeeper Alliance.
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