TAARA attends L.E.A.D Agency’s 27th Tar Creek Environmental Conference

TAARA Executive Committee members Barbara VanHanken and Kelsey Royce and TAARA

volunteer Neera Singh attended the L.E.A.D Agency’s 27th Tar Creek Environmental

Conference in Miami, OK October 7th and 8th, 2025.

Local Environmental Action Demanded, or the L.E.A.D Agency is a 501(c) (3) non-profit

dedicated to education about environmental justice concerns in Northeast Oklahoma and is a member of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Rebecca Jim and Earl Hatley founded the organization in 1997 to address environmental contamination caused by the world’s largest lead and zinc mines in Picher, Oklahoma that caused lead leaching into the nearby creeks and lakes and lead poisoning in children of the area.

Their powerful annual conference brings together scientists, tribal leaders, government

agencies, and local residents to discuss environmental concerns. This year’s conference had 45 guest speakers on a range of inspiring and ground breaking projects ranging from how to restore native prairies to how to grow your volunteer base as a non-profit organization. Gretchen Sassenrath from Kansas State University spoke about the role of soil health in water quality. Chris Williams of the Anthropocene Alliance spoke about the importance of forming regional alliances to tackle environmental issues. Mara Hamilton with the Peoria Tribe shared her project on fresh water mussels in Oklahoma being the “livers of the rivers” removing toxins from our streams. Ken Roberts from University of Tulsa shared his ground breaking research in analyzing mussel tissue growth rings to assess water quality. Brandon Gibson and Colin Spriggs from the Euchee Butterfly Farm and Tribal Alliance for Pollinators shared wonderful news about their project to build a seed bank of native plant species important to our pollinators here in Northeast Oklahoma as well as how they use these seeds collected in the wild to grow native plants for new pollinator garden projects. These were just a few of the amazing speakers.

This year’s conference added a new component- a day of organizing, networking, and

strategizing for the groups in a new L.E.A.D initiative called the Regional Resilience Collective (RRC). Current groups that have joined the RRC are TAARA, Spring Creek Coalition, Kiamichi River Legacy Alliance, Women Empowered for Democracy, the Carrie Dickerson Foundation, EcoSavvy Insights, Green Connections, TriCity Collective, and other non-profits and individuals. According to the Conference program, “The RRC is organizing to augment our impact in addressing current and future environmental challenges in Northeast Oklahoma. The great Shawnee leader Tecumseh once stressed that one stick can easily be broken but ‘sticks in a bundle are unbreakable’”. TAARA continues its dedication to building connections with other citizen groups to protect Oklahoma’s waters. TAARA honors the L.E.A.D Agency’s decades long leadership in Oklahoma to build the power of Tecumseh’s bundle of sticks.