How mining nearly killed the 'richest hill on Earth'
For decades, the city of Butte, Mont., was wealthier than anywhere on the planet. But the incredible mining operations that brought so much wealth eventually poisoned the town, putting it on the brink of being uninhabitable. Now, Butte is slowly recovering, but a big price was paid. CNET Road Trip 2009 visited to see where things stand.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)BUTTE, Mont.--When you visit a town whose current (though not historical) claim to fame is hosting one of America's biggest Superfund sites, it's hard to know what you're going to experience when you get there.
But when I was planning Road Trip 2009 and discovered that this Continental Divide city had once been known as the "richest hill on Earth" due to monumental mining wealth, but was now a city trying desperately to recover from the poisons the mining left behind, I knew I had to check it out.
Instantly, upon reaching the historic district on the hill, where most of the mining--largely copper, but also gold, silver, and other metals--was done, you can tell this is a town with a past. And only a past. Everywhere you look are wide, empty streets and run-down houses and buildings, many clearly the former prides and joys of the wealthy, that now speak to the end of copper's reign as a kingmaker.
Yet it's not the scruffy character of the town that is its real problem. The true elephant in the room is the contamination legacy of decade after decade of mining. This is a town that produced at least $48 billion worth of metals, and that for a time was the richest city on the planet. But dig thousands of miles of mines, abandon them in favor of gigantic open pits, and then combine that with allowing groundwater to seep up through the mine tunnels and the giant pit, and you have an environmental catastrophe.
The centerpiece of it all is the Berkeley Pit, the unbelievably large eyesore that dominates the hill on the north end of town. More than 7,000 feet long, 5,600 feet wide, and 1,800 feet deep, the Berkeley Pit opened for business in 1955, and eventually produced 320 million tons of ore and more than 700 million tons of waste rock.
Its water level is currently at 5,280 feet--exactly a mile high--and 2.9 million gallons of water with a pH of 2.5 to 3.0 is flowing in each day.
Mining ceased there in 1982, but over the years, the rising water in the pit has still been pumped out to extract copper from it. Today, 13.2 million gallons of its water is pumped out for copper extraction.
"It can be said that mining continues today in the Berkeley Pit," writes a local information publication called Pit Watch, "as Montana Resources' (the mine's former owner) copper recovery project is recovering the dissolved copper that exists in the water contained within the walls of the Pit."
Though underground mining in Butte ended decades ago, the huge headframes (or main above-ground structures) of many old mines still dominate the landscape throughout Uptown, as it's known.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)These days, one of the most pressing problems is that the water rising inside the pit is approaching a water level of 5,410 feet, or what is known as the "critical water level," the point at which the poisons in the water can seep through the walls of the pit and into Butte's aquifer. There seems to be general agreement among the mine's owners and city, state, and federal officials that this is years away from happening, but that doesn't mean some city residents don't already assume their water supply is contaminated.
Indeed, though, it was the imminent threat of the poisoning of the aquifer that led to Butte's biggest crisis. If the water supply was contaminated directly, it could have meant the end of the city. Having seemingly escaped that fate, today the city's water comes from a source on the other side of town. But again, not everyone is convinced what they're drinking is safe.
Defining the problem
Here's how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sums up the problems left behind by Butte's copper, silver, gold, and zinc mining operations:
"The long period of mining in Butte left the landscape littered with un-vegetated or sparsely vegetated mine wastes, often containing hazardous concentrations of metals and arsenic," the EPA writes on the Superfund page dedicated to Butte. "These wastes represent significant sources of environmental contamination to Silver Bow Creek and posed human health and risks to the environment.
"Ground water, surface water, and soils are contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals, including copper, zinc, cadmium, and lead. Silver Bow Creek and the Clark Fork River contain metals from the cities of Butte to Milltown. The tailings, dispersed along the creek and river, severely limit aquatic life forms and have caused fish kills in the river. Potential health threats include direct contact with and ingestion of contaminated soil, surface water, ground water, or inhaling contaminated air."
No small problem, that, especially since the cleanup isn't finished, nor does it look to be any time soon. Even trying to sum up the various initiatives that are part of the Superfund operation isn't practical in an article of this size. Suffice it to say there is almost no end to the arms of the cleanup efforts.
The Horseshoe Bend Water Treatment Plant, which is treating and recycling much of the water that would otherwise be filling up the Berkeley Pit.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Yet, even while Butte, or at least its historic district, staggers like a drunk trying to get home after a night out, mining is still going strong. The Berkeley Pit may now be essentially a museum piece, but in plain sight of the viewing stand where the public can come to see the visceral downsides to mining, the Continental Pit is very much up and running. There, another giant pit is turning out large amounts of copper.
Of course, in a town like Butte, where mining was pretty much the only game in town, it's not hard to find reminders that whatever its dangers, the world owes a lot to mining. It's something the mining companies would have wanted the world to think about back in copper's heyday here, and the same is surely true today of Montana Resources, the operator of the Continental Pit.
A sign in the World Museum of Mining, located on the edges of Butte, maybe best sums up the message.
"Most people pass their days with no thought of the role mining plays in their lives," reads the sign, titled, "What mining means to Americans" and authored by the American Mining Congress. "They know where to buy the things they want but seldom consider the origins. Food comes from a grocery, electricity from a wall socket, tools from a hardware store, cars from a dealer...and so on. If we do think of how these things are created, many of us probably begin with farms, factories, and power stations.
"In fact, they all begin with mining.
"Without minerals, we could not till our soil, build our machines, supply our energy, transport our goods, or maintain any society beyond the most primitive. Our horn of plenty starts with a hole in the ground.
"We are in trouble if we forget that!"
Reading that sign, one can't help but acknowledge the points it makes. A similar sentiment is expressed in an informational audio recording that plays on loop at the Berkeley Pit and describes how the opening of the pit meant the evisceration of several Butte neighborhoods. "If (the mine) did not produce, it would cost every miner's family their livelihood," the recording states.
Water treatment
One of the most welcome additions to the Berkeley Pit is the Horseshoe Bend Water Treatment Plant, which was built alongside the pit and went online in 2003. The idea is that water is treated and recycled--much into Continental Pit mining operations--but that it does not simply just continue to fill up the pit. The various entities involved in the pit--the city, residents, mining companies, and other governmental agencies--seem pleased with the results of the plant.
Still, with more than 40 billion gallons of highly poisonous water sitting in the Berkeley Pit, and more coming up into it every day through the thousands of miles of mining tunnels underneath, one has to ask if the children of Butte, and their children, have gotten a very raw end of the deal.
For the next two weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
Lets look at your Logic? you say anyone who made minimum wage should Burdon the responsibility for the clean up or move? Lets put the responsibility where it belongs on the mining companies that made $50 billion. Better yet force the mining companies to move their families to butte and let them live in the disaster they created and they profited from.
Now mining company's are required to place large bonds down prior to mining in order to get the rights to mine. In order to get that money back they companies are required to have the mined lands tested multiple times a year for at least a 2 year period. The land also must be deemed to benefit the community better than before. Its a very strict process.
That is where most of the problems are coming from: the corporations were given the same rights as individuals to lobby Congress and give campaign contributions, and that is when this country started going downhill, in the mid-late 1980's.
I appreciate your nod to the locals and agree that the author should have better researched the people of Butte. It would have made the piece less cynical if he'd also acknowledged new ways in which Butte is changing, but I do not think he spent enough time or effort to fully understand Butte and its lighter side. Was he perhaps in town for one of the many festivals, such as the national folk festival which drew 150,000 people?
You can see most of the pit from the hill the hospital is on...
Only in Butte would a derelict open pit mine be considered a tourist attraction...
The Madonna of the Rockies just east of Butte is a much better 'tourist attraction'... Evel Knievel is Butte's biggest 'hero' and they have "Evel Knievel Days' every year. Although Levi Liepheimer who rides for the Astana team is a completely forgotten son of Butte... [just dropped out of the Le Tour with a broken wrist]
Butte is a hard scrabble town that should have died a long time ago... ...or, actually, it did die, they just never told the residents....
For those who cannot look beyond appearances, Butte will always seem like a foreign place. This is natural, given the American propensity to pretend our garbage or waste water just disappears, and we need take no personal responsibility for it.
Otherwise, how can the water be that high if the pit is only 1800 feet deep?
Or I am just missing something?
The elevation of the water's surface above sea level is not reported. Although, from looking at it, the water level seems to be below much of the town... Sources report that the level of water in the pit is about 180 feet below the level of ground water in Butte. The water level in the pit is controlled by pumping.
BTW, the pit can be seen from space ? http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_697.html
Dont's say that. The "Save The Micro-organism Foundation" will forbid any cleanup until this micro-organism can be preserved.
As for mining wages, I find it interesting that miners from all over the world immigrated to the United States to work in the mines. I seriously doubt that this would have taken place if the wages were so low. The fact is that mining wages were often some of the best wages around. Look at all the tin miners from Cornwall that came to the United States to work the mines, bringing with them a wealth of mining technology that allowed much more efficient operations of the mines. That is just one example. Of course, there are going to be different pay grades. A mucker is obviously going to make less than a mining engineer - that just stands to reason.
For those of you that think that electricity comes from a wall socket and chrome comes from Detroit, I've got news for you - we need our natural resources. In the development of the industrial base of this country that has given us one of the greatest standards of living the world has every seen, we have been blessed with an abundance of natural resources that allowed that to happen.
Technology for extraction of natural resources has improved over time, but it is still a high impact operation. The problem is that natural resources are found where they are found. There are only specific places where copper is found, for instance. You can't change that, so we need to strike a balance between the impacts of natural resources extraction versus the desire to minimize those impacts.
I don't recall ever reading how Butte's ground water was undrinkable before the pit.
"Part of any mining operation is reclamation - a concept that has certainly evolved over the years...To penalize companies for was standard operating procedures in the past is akin to blaming the car companies for not meeting current emissions standards for cars that were built in the 50's and 60's."
Reclamation might be part of mining, today. It certainly was, and is, not part of mining copper in Butte. The Berkeley Pit is relatively recent in its construction and there was no reclamation done at the time it was abandoned.
There were no standards for the mining companies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is why Butte is like it is, today. The owners of the mines - Daly, Clarke, Heinz - are long dead and their families scattered to the wind. No one has ever held them responsible for the environmental damage they caused. That's why the pit is a SuperFund clean up site.
Daly, Clarke and Heinz certainly weren't interested in reclamation. They just wanted to take the minerals, leave the mess and return east with their money.
"I seriously doubt that this would have taken place if the wages were so low."
In 1873, miners were asked to take a pay cut from $3.50 to $3.00. This was about usual for wages in Butte in this era. Irish and Cornish miners were recruited and put on ships to the US, just to work in the mines at Butte. When many arrived in Butte, they didn't speak English and had notes that read "Butte USA" pinned to their clothing. Much of the immigration to Butte from Ireland took place during the potato famine. People didn't migrate to Butte for the wages, they migrated there so that they wouldn't starve to death.
In the era of the Copper Kings, personal property rights reigned supreme. Virtually no governmental intervention was allowed to safeguard miners or regulate mining conditions. The Copper Kings took full advantage of this.
"The fact is that mining wages were often some of the best wages around. Look at all the tin miners from Cornwall that came to the United States to work the mines, bringing with them a wealth of mining technology that allowed much more efficient operations of the mines."
Cornish miners did not come to the US to work in the copper mines at Butte because it would make them wealthy or even pay a living wage. They earned between a dollar and three dollars a day. They lived in squalor. They had no collective bargaining rights. The very air they breathed was poisoned by the arsenic produced in copper smelting. Before the construction of the Anaconda copper smelter in the town of Anaconda, one person died every day in Butte because of air pollution, (arsenic), from open smelting of copper. If the miners threatened to strike, they were summarily fired and the mines shut down. The Cornish miners were treated the same as the Irish.
There were no tin mines in Butte, which is the subjective of this discussion.
"For those of you that think that electricity comes from a wall socket and chrome comes from Detroit, I've got news for you - we need our natural resources."
I don't think anyone disagrees that we have to have minerals. The discussion here is what happened in Butte and that nothing was done to reclaim the land.
"Technology for extraction of natural resources has improved over time, but it is still a high impact operation..."
Mining is a business and business is about bottom line. Which means leave the mess. This is a frequent story in the history of Montana. Even now, executives of W.R. Grace, a company that operated a vermiculite mine in Libby is fighting with the government over the asbestos released during mining has contaminated the whole area. Grace doesn't want to have to clean it up...
The deterioration in average pay and income in the West has often been attributed to the loss of relatively high paid jobs in the natural resource sectors (forest products, mining, and metal processing) and their replacement by poorly paid jobs in service producing sectors.
The 1977 SMCRA and its implementing regulations set environmental standards that mines must follow while operating, and achieve when reclaiming mined land. Bonding is required and clean up standards are in place along with inspections. Is it perfect - hell no, but it is much, much better than the situation that was in place when the Butte hole was created.
The government passed the Superfund law in 1980 and they still have not cleaned up this mess. Both parties had several chances to clean this up and both failed.
Future generations can't be burdened with cleaning up after us. Corporations build their mines... and then walk away. Shareholders reap their profits, and then sell their stock. This is really a "credit crisis" where prosperity is artificially created by ignoring ALL the real costs. But now, 25 years after they've left, those real and unavoidable costs become due and payable. And they always do. Sadly, it's the taxpayer that bears most of that burden. SMCRA is a small step in the right direction, but it hardly begins to pass on those costs, and most importantly only regulates coal mining. And as someone who actively participates in those "clean-ups" sadly points out, that task is not approached with the same sense of dedication and performance as is necessary. In realty, our prosperity is overstated by passing along the costs to future generations.
To those who suggest this is a local, Butte problem, please don't loose sight of one key fact -- we only have one planet, and we have no right to leave it pot-marked with areas incapable of supporting any life. This mine in Butte is but one example of the tens of thousands of places around the planet that people have left land incapable of supporting life. We are but brief occupants of this earth, and our highest responsibility is, as backpackers have learned, to LEAVE NO TRACE. It's all connected. We're all dependent on the delicate balance of nature. When we damage one part, we are taking yet another step towards destroying the whole system.
This mine is the perfect example of what we're doing wrong. Are we smart enough to learn from these mistakes and develop a better way? A better way of mining the resources we need, and a better way of returning the planet to it's former state? And who are we to think future generations deserve to suffer so we can enjoy more? Our children are counting on us to wake up before it's too late.
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-pit-of-life-and-death
The city's municipal water supply is from two pure mountain lake surface water sources and the Big Hole River, a premier trout stream 50 miles south. Unlike most of America, no one has peed in our water because we're so high up in the Rockies there are no treatment plants upstream.
A buddy of mine visited once from New Jersey and upon landing one of the first things he said was "You've got great air here." He was right.
Most Americans live in atmospheric cesspools. You've just gotten accustomed to it.
Don't pity us.
Like Anaconda and Butte when the wind blows slag particles from the Anaconda smelter into town...
A lot of things can be said about Butte, but healthy is not one of them...
There is one sin of commission: the water supply is good, it comes from the other side of the Continental Divide, and few if any residents have concerns about their water being contaminated with mine waste.
And one of omission: Superfund as saved Butte--we are at about $1 billion and counting, and this money has produced a fairly healthy economy based on cleanup--what scholars now call the "restoration economy."
As an added note, there is no excuse for what the Anaconda Copper Mining Company did to Butte & its environment. The environmental & human health consequences of mining & smelting have been well known for more than a century. Why did the Company do this? Because it could--and it was far cheaper to use the environment as a free garbage dump than to be responsible for mine waste.
- by EcoRover July 23, 2009 5:22 PM PDT
- Check out Don & Andrea Stierle's research on anti-cancer compounds isolated from microbes found in the Berkeley Pit. Evolution, what an interesting and marvelous process...
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (44 Comments)You can read about Stierles' research in the Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/march99/microbes8.htm and the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/us/09pit-.html .