This past week, Arbuckle Aggregates LLC along with representatives from the Oklahoma Department of Mines held an informal meeting in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. Arbuckle Aggregates has applied for a permit to mine 575 acres near Mill Creek, Oklahoma.
At the meeting, and according to local news sources, one lady that opposed the permit stood up and spoke up. In regards to the mining permit being approved she declared that the establishment of another rock mining facility in the Mill Creek area would be "a premeditated crime against the environment."
I have to agree.
Last weekend, on the trail to the river Blue, I couldn't help but notice the activity that was going on at the present mining operations atop the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer. The sand, gravel, rock and boulders are piled so high they have formed mesas. Unnatural mesas because they don't belong along this landscape - unnatural mesas because they are desecrating the natural landscape.
Their giant claws dig deeper and deeper, scalping the top of the well springs, flooding their own pits, then those pits have to be de-watered. De-watered is synonymous with waste.
Of course at this meeting that was held, the mining company was well represented with their legal staff, ducks in a row, i's dotted, t's crossed. And, the Department of Mines was represented, metaphorically holding up a sign that read "Don't shoot the messenger." Of course the Department of Mines live by a mandated existence full of proper procedures.
Let's just shoot the messenger... and the mining company too, but not with bullets, but rather a good dose of a passage of a new law that says enough drilling has been done, and there will be no more near this sole source aquifer.
If we fail, then this lush south sea of the prairie ocean great... may very well become a desert. At high risk are Mill Creek, Pennington Creek, and the river Blue.
1 comment:
I talked to a guy the other day who told me he pumps water directly out of the Blue to water his pecan trees. I wanted to punch his lights out.
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