A landscape transformed
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"I think that if there is one environmental lesson to be learned that the last 20, 30, or 40 years have taught us is that it's a hell of a lot easier to prevent a problem than it is to fix it once you've got it."
-Rex Buchanan, associate director of the Kansas Geological Survey in Lawrence
Acid rock drainage colors a body of water reddish-orange near Treece, Ks., rendering the water toxic and lifeless.
Surfacing mining for coal in the tri-state area contributed significantly to quench the nation's thirst for energy, but it also caused irreversible environmental damage. Above, strip mines reduce the land uses possibilities for this section of land near West Mineral, Ks.
At the site of an abandoned mine derrick, Randy Barr tosses a rock into a mine shaft filled with water. The uncovered shaft measures hundreds of feet deep.
Once the hub of outdoor sporting activity, an abandoned and overgrown baseball field sits directly above hollow ground from undermining in Picher, Ok. Officials closed the park a few years after it was constructed out of concern that the ground was in danger of collapsing.
Trash litters a ground collapse near Galena, Ks. Sub-surface miners would sometimes leave as little as 30-feet of soil between their mine and the ground above.
Mickey Center, left, and Murray Balk peer into a ground cave collapse caused by undermining in Galena, Ks., measuring 90-100 feet deep. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment's Surface Mining Section has filled more than 700 coal mine collapse since 1996. 'We get calls every day," Balk said. "Especially when it rains because more of them open up."
Locals use the chat piles for such things as shooting ranges and motorcycle trails.
The Tar Creek Superfund is comprised of individual private land, state land, federal land and tribal land, creating a bureaucratic stalemate at times.
A bullet-ridden sign warns passersby, including Randy Johnson, of an open mine shaft leading to hundreds of feet into the ground near Galena, Kan. The old mining areas in southeast Kansas are covered with these holes.
An eight-feet wide air vent dropping hundreds of feet below to a lead and zinc mine appears suddenly, without warning, in a wooded area south of Galena, Ks. Law enforcement have searched some of these shafts for missing people and have recovered murder victims dumped into the shafts.
Murray Balk, left, and Randy Johnson measure a 30-feet wide sinkhole caused by undermining in Rick Schultz's field in Southeast Kansas. Abandoned sub-surface coal mines are collapsing, causing sinkholes and large ground collapses that often times lead to voids hundreds of feet deep throughout the tri-state mining district in southeast Kansas.
Old tires fill a water logged sink hole caused by undermining south of Galena High School in Galena, Ks.
"I'm going nowhere," says Picher resident Jon Finn. "I'm staying here 'til I die." The State of Oklahoma is paying Picher residents to relocate from the town for health reasons. Finn, who earns a living constructing model mining derricks, lost both his father, William, and brother, Don, to tuberculosis caused by inhaling coal dust.
Surface mining left large devastated areas of land, called spoil banks, as seen from 2,000-feet above Weir, Ks. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, passed by Congress in 1977, established a program for regulating the surface mining industry and reclamation activities. The law sought to minimize the adverse social, economic and environmental effects of surface mining.
Mining’s Legacy
Video interview
Geologist Jim McCauley
Photo slideshow
"A bad way to make a living"
Video interview
Former miner Walter Wettstein
Photo gallery
A landscape transformed
Video interview
Dave Drake, EPA project manager
Photo gallery
A tale of two cities
Video interview
Picher resident Jon Finn
Video
River City Weekly
Video interview
Treece Mayor Bill Blunk
Video interview
Senator Pat Roberts
Video interview
Representative Doug Gatewood