Abstract
In 1983, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) designated Tar Creek, a former productive zinc and lead mining zone located in northeastern Oklahoma on land predominantly owned by the Indigenous Quapaw people, as a Superfund site. Its designation came in the wake of findings in 1980 that drainage and tailings from the site’s mining days had polluted the zone’s surface water into some of the most toxic water in the country. Tar Creek was an environmental justice disaster that disproportionately exposed the historically marginalized Quapaw Nation to hazardous mining waste and resulted in detrimental health impacts. Despite numerous demonstrations of the health effects of mine waste on the local population of Tar Creek, government remediation efforts were slow-going for decades. This pace changed around 2013 when the Quapaw Nation began participating in site remediation efforts; since then, clean-up and decontamination of Tar Creek have made tremendous progress. Despite this success, it is environmentally unjust that it took so long for the Quapaw Nation to be included in remediation efforts on their land. Drawing on lessons from Tar Creek and Quapaw Nation, this Note will advocate a model of hazardous waste management on tribal lands that utilizes Superfund law, accompanied by an environmental justice approach, to proactively integrate Indigenous communities in Superfund site remediation, thereby improving site outcomes and advancing principles of environmental justice.
Recommended Citation
Leah Fitter,
“Downstream People:” Lessons from the Tar Creek Superfund Site and Quapaw Nation in Pursuit of an Environmental Justice-Informed CERCLA Regime,
21
Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y.
406
(2026).
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njlsp/vol21/iss2/12
