Best Word in the Times today

Chat: "pulverized rock laced with lead and iron."

Describing the landscape of Treece, Kansas, where kids play among mounds of this stuff. Treece is a town of 140 people who all want to leave. Great article by Susan Saulny about a horrible situation. The social and physical devastation of rampant pollution from years of mining. A lot of the iron, zinc and lead mined there ($20 billion worth, at one point) was used in WWII weapons factories, it seems. Treece was effectively one with neighboring Picher, Oklahoma, until the first of this month, when the latter ceased its official existence. The EPA determined it couldn't clean up Picher with everyone still there, so the feds bought out and relocated nearly all of the 1,800 residents that remained from a peak population of 20,000. In 1993, a third of children tested in Picher had enough lead in their blood to cause brain or nervous system damage. Somehow, they think they can clean up Treece without doing the same.

In the meantime, Treece sounds like a wasteland: socially and spiritually as well as environmentally.

"In addition to living in fear of lead and other poisons, they lost their stores, gas stations, some public services, jobs and their social outlet with the demise of Picher."

I can't imagine: 140 people, less than 10% of the combined towns, left to watch the houses of Picher crumble and decay, a scene soon to be joined by EPA clean-up crews and equipment. Google Maps says its a 1.8 mile drive between the centers of each town; if I remember trigonometry correctly, that's about 1.2 miles as the bird flies. Saulny writes of Picher: "Stray dogs wander. Faded signs announce places that are no longer there: the Picher Mining Museum, the Church of the Nazarene, and 24-hour truck stop."