Toxic Kingdom/Tar Creek Futures —The Case of Picher & Cardin Mining Areas, Ottawa County, Oklahoma, USA

A case study of long-term planning and reclamation of the forty square mile Tar Creek Superfund Site is presented through sustainable planning and design activities and strategies at the community level. Tar Creek in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, a former lead mining area and part of the Tri-State Mining Area represents the failure of federal and state agencies to address decades of environmental degradation, toxic land conditions and environmental justice issues. Local communities and neighborhoods and environmental officers in collaboration with academic research groups have addressed the long-term remediation, planning and regeneration of vast mining soil heaps, polluted waterways and rivers and land subsidence and mineshaft sinkholes. The case study will argue that the local-based transformations of the site act as a framework to unite community desires, environmental cleanup, and landscape regeneration.