NYT article: Welcome to Our Town. Wish We Weren’t Here. (Treece, Kan.)

[Heidi]

Mayor Bill Blunk, of Treece, Kan., is pressing for a federal buyout of the town.

Published: September 13, 2009
TREECE, Kan. — Mayor Bill Blunk sees no reason for sugar-coating his opinion when asked to describe this town.

“It’s dead,” he said. “Wasted land.”

Almost anywhere else on the map, such bluntness could cost a politician re-election. But not here. Mr. Blunk has the near-unanimous support of the population, 140 people or so, who are perhaps singular among residents of municipalities in that they all want out of theirs.

<snip>

For most of the early part of the 20th century, this little city in the southeast corner of Kansas had the feel of a rollicking boom town, its prosperity coming from land rich in lead, zinc and iron ore. Part of a vast mining district where Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma meet, Treece and its twin city across the Oklahoma state line, Picher, became the unofficial capitals of a zone that in its heyday produced more than $20 billion worth of ore — much of it used for weaponry to fight World Wars I and II.

But when the last of the mines closed in the 1970s, Treece was left sitting in a toxic waste dump of lead-tinged dust, contaminated soil and sinkholes. 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.

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[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. wanna bet they vote republican and hate "socialized" medicine?

[Heidi]

3. Dunno.

That's not a judgment I'd make simply based on the fact they live in a small Kansas town. :shrug:

[KittyWampus]

2. Give it back to the Buffalo & Wind Farms. Let Native Americans manage the population and turbines..

Edit- after toxic piles are cleaned up.