Berkeley Pit
Monday, 15th January 2007 by Alex Turnbull
This is the infamous Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana. This enormous open-pit copper mine was opened in 1955, and when it was closed in 1982, groundwater began to leak into the basin - disastrously passing through the metal deposits in the soil. The water became laden with a deadly mix of heavy metals and poisonous chemicals such as cadmium, zinc, arsenic and sulphuric acid.
There's an estimated 30 billion gallons of water in Berkeley Pit which is (despite major cleanup efforts) still incredibly toxic. The water here was reputedly responsible for killing 342 snowgeese who landed here in 1995, and apparently has a pH level of about 2.5, which ranks it more acidic than tea, coffee, acid rain, beer, orange juice and vinegar. That's as acidic as cola and only slightly less acidic than gastric acid... (Update: It turns out "only slightly" is misleading. See this comment for more information.)
You can read more about Berkeley Pit at WIkipedia.
Thanks to Matt, Kaley, Patia, Kari Valimaa, Jeremy, James Boorman-Padgett, Ben Hall and xramin.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
So, You’re telling me it’s a giant vat of cola! Result!
Someone has a crush on somebody:
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=45.950322,-112.498423&z=18
Ooh nice find mousky, it’s funny when they can’t even be bothered finishing their names!
That could be directed at former racing driver and motoring presenter Tiff Needell. Do they get Top Gear in Montana?
The message is not yellow. I’m dissapointed.
how much would you need to drink to make that much yellow snow?
As acidic as cola I’ll bet, but despite probably being healthier for you, its probably not as tasty (except perhaps tastier than Coke Blak)
“ARCO, the current custodian of the Pit, denied that the toxic water caused the death of the geese, instead blaming their deaths on their diet.”
Right. A heavy diet of male cow dung, then?
“only slightly less acidic than gastric acid…”
I hate to be geeky about this but I beg to differ. Blame it on being a science teacher.
Gastric acid is around pH1. The pH scale is logarithmic – each number up actually represents a decrease by a factor of 10 of the hydrogen ions that constitute acidity.
Therefore the Berkely pit is actually something like 17 times weaker than stomach acid. Sorry.
Thanks for that B Bateson- I’ve updated the post accordingly.
Not a crush on somebody…just a big fan of the TIFF image format.
Here is some more information from the public group monitoring the Berkeley Pit.
http://www.pitwatch.org/news.htm