Treece, Kansas, is a poisoned town. Only one house remains. Tim and Della Busby are the lone residents of the community today. And they say they're staying put. Even if it's toxic, Treece is still their home.
This tiny community in southeast Kansas used to be a bustling mining enclave -- with a school, hundreds of homes and bars the got rowdy with drunken miners on payday.
But, the mines that turned Treece into a boomtown ultimately left it lifeless and abandoned.
It's a toxic ghost town now. All but two residents left when the federal government offered buyouts to the 138 people who stuck around after the mines shut down, the Kansas City Star reports.
The Environmental Protection Agency says decades of zinc and lead mining have left the soil, water and air contaminated.
Massive piles of poisoned mining debris, called chat, litter the streets. The mines that were dug beneath the town are turning the ground into Swiss cheese, as massive sink holes develop throughout the town -- many big enough and deep enough to swallow a man whole.
In 2009, the federal government began offering buy-outs for the residents of Treece after Congress approved $3.5 million to vacate the town and turn it into a Superfund site.
Treece was abandoned after nearby Picher, Oklahoma, which sits just across the state line, was bought out by the federal government and bought out for the same reason -- lead contamination left by decades of mining.
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