The Tragedy Of Tar Creek

Administration officials say they are cleaning up the nation's 1,240 highest-priority sites as fast as they can. But that will be harder, since the multibillion-dollar industry-paid trust fund, set aside for abandoned sites such as Tar Creek, ran dry in October. The fund was supplied by taxes on the purchase of toxic chemicals and petroleum and on corporate profits above $2 million. But the Republican-led Congress allowed the fees to expire in 1995. Bush is the first President to oppose the levies, and last month Lautenberg and other Senate Democrats lost a narrow vote to reinstate them. In protest, the Sierra Club aired "Make Polluters Pay" TV ads in Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan--all swing states. And on April 15, tax day, activists in 25 states picketed post offices to object. "We went from polluters paying to citizens paying," says Oklahoma environmentalist Earl Hatley. "Now EPA doesn't have the money for megasites like Tar Creek."

Meanwhile, Superfund defenders in Washington are bracing for a new battle: a Bush-appointed advisory committee, which they claim is heavily stacked with corporate members, issued a report last week that pushes for administrative changes. "It is a wonky thing," says Julie Wolk of the Public Interest Research Group. "But it could dramatically weaken the program." Companies want to limit liability and shift responsibility to the states, where rules are more flexible. Federal standards are "rigid and extreme," says Michael Steinberg of the Superfund Settlements Project, an industry group that includes General Electric, DuPont and IBM. "Groundwater must meet standards for tap water, even though at many of these sites no one drinks it. Soil at many sites must be clean enough so people could play in it. The costs exceed the benefits."

With the EPA's clout slackening, private attorneys are moving in. At Tar Creek, lawyers are suing seven mining companies on behalf of scores of lead-exposed children. A separate suit demanding a cleanup was filed by the Quapaw Indians, whose land was leased for the mines. And environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has joined a class action to force companies to relocate the population of two polluted towns, Picher and Cardin. Court papers suggest that mining executives knew as early as the 1930s that the contaminated dust was dangerous but sought to, in their words, "dissuade" the government from intervening. A mining-company lawyer says the charge is based on "out-of-context reading" of historical documents.

Just how dangerous that dust might be is still a matter of dispute. Doctors at the Harvard School of Public Health have begun extensive studies in Tar Creek, not just of lead exposure but also of the cocktail mix of lead, manganese, cadmium and other metals that interact in unknown ways. "We're looking at four generations of poisoning," says Rebecca Jim of the L.E.A.D. agency, a local group. Meanwhile, parents like Evona Moss wonder what else the toxic brew might have done. Did it cause her obesity and bad teeth? Is it responsible for the malformation of her daughter's shins? Does her baby's asthma come from the chat? Her nephew's cancer? No one knows because no one has done careful, long-term studies.