Kansas town really is just dust in the wind
Add another destination to your list of day trips not to take.
The New York Times notes today the passing of Treece, a lead-contaminated Kansas mining town near the borders of Missouri and Oklahoma. Town Mayor Bill Blunk tells the Times, “It’s dead. Wasted land.”
About 140 residents remain, most of them waiting … and waiting for the federal government to relocate them. Despite pressure from Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback and Rep. Lynn Jenkins and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the EPA shows no signs of directing funds Treece’s way.
The Wichita Eagle told the story in a series of heartbreaking photographs earlier in the summer. The Times‘ grabby scene:
On a hot summer day, children can be seen riding their bikes around enormous
mounds of chat — pulverized rock laced with lead and iron. It is the waste
product left over from mining that is the cause of so many problems here.
Uncontrolled, it blows in the wind.
The EPA wants to rehabilitate the soil, a process the agency figures will take about 10 years. Meanwhile, it says, the area is safe. But just for the heck of it, it set up shop in Treece last week to offer free lead-poisoning testing.
(image credit: sitesatlas.com)
