What are chat piles and how do they affect tar creek. These piles contain lead-contaminated dust and are part of the reasons the area is designated as the Tar Creek Superfund site. When the wind blows (and it always does), that dust goes everywhere. She said that the EPA initially missed the biggest issue: chat piles. Mounds of chat and tailings - leftover mine waste - mark the landscape along State Highway 69 through Ottawa County. This isn’t ancient history. That's nearly 800 acres of . Another image, taken in 2006, of chat in the Tar Creek Superfund site. Aug 25, 2025 · When Tar Creek overflows its banks, floodwaters mobilize particles from chat piles, leading to the widespread dispersal of dangerous heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and zinc. It is important to note that the Quapaw Tribal land is in close proximity to the piles, but ancestral indigenous lands span the entire area of this map. Jul 9, 2004 · By Lisa Hicks Cherokee Phoenix Staff OTTAWA COUNTY, Okla. They hold thousands of tons of heavy metal-laced waste. This is still happening. (created by Rebeccah Moulding) The chat piles—those mountains of leftover crushed rock—are still there, looming over the prairie like silent witnesses. Nearly 75 million tons of the gray gravel sullies the landscape in the 40-square mile area of the Tar Creek Superfund Site. - Chat is the most visible of the many problems that plague Tar Creek. Chat (mining) This image, taken in 2010, shows a chat pile near Picher, Oklahoma. See full list on semspub. Tar Creek continues to bleed orange to Oct 23, 2024 · King said that with the EPA’s work on Tar Creek, and her own creation of a one-acre wetland, the creek is almost clean today, but the water, she said, was not the biggest problem in Picher. gov Dec 4, 2023 · A geographical visual of chat piles around the Tar Creek Superfund Site inspired by Google Maps on 11/11/23. epa. jjrw grgtav hglih cil fnon cgr wnhsu clxb quqere ooqdbz