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| INFO@PITWATCH.ORG |
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| Last Update: 02.08.10 |
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ABOUT PITWATCH PitWatch.org is the Web version
of PITWATCH, published periodically by the Berkeley Pit Public Education Committee for the purpose of educating Butte residents, students and visitors about the Berkeley Pit and related issues. The Committee welcomes your questions and comments. The content of PITWATCH is largely driven by community interest in specific topics. See below for contact information, or email questions regarding the Pit to info@pitwatch.org. In the pages of PITWATCH and on this website, you can find answers to common questions about the Pit, historical information, how the groundwater systems around the Pit work, plus current water-level measurements for key monitoring spots. CONTACT US
Send e-mail to info@pitwatch.org or send a letter to: BERKELEY PIT PUBLIC EDUCATION COMMITTEE Local residents make up half of this volunteer group, with other members drawn from entities directly involved with the Pit Project. The Committee's work is staffed by the County and funded by Atlantic Richfield Co. and Montana Resources as part of their responsibilities under the Record of Decision. CITIZEN MEMBERS:
With assistance from the Clark Fork Watershed Education Program, and the Montana Bureau of Mines & Geology, Back Issues of PITWATCH Available If you want more information about the Berkeley Pit and mine flooding issues, back issues of PITWATCH are available. Content from all back issues is posted on this website, and hard copies are available at the Berkeley Pit Viewing Stand, the Butte Visitors Center, and a wide variety of businesses around Butte. Hard copies are also available by request: email info@pitwatch.org. The Record of Decision (ROD, 1994) and Consent Decree (CD, 2002)
for the Berkeley Pit and surrounding flooded underground mine works (the Butte Mine-Flooding Operable Unit) are available for review. Review copies are available
at the following locations: Butte EPA Office Digital copies are also available for download from the EPA: Butte Mine-Flooding Operable Unit Record of Decision (pdf format, 469 pp, 938k) Silver Bow Creek/Butte Five-Year Review-September 30, 2005 (pdf format, 217 pp, 2.6 MB) |
1955: The year it all began In 1955, mining in Butte saw the light, literally. Excavation on what would become the Berkeley Pit, named from one of several nearby historic underground mines that the Pit would later swallow, began that year in a transition from underground to open pit mining. The Pit would, in the next decade, swallow Butte neighborhoods like Meaderville, Dublin Gulch, and McQueen. The transition to open pit mining, a highly mechanized form of mining, also meant fewer jobs for the city’s miners. But mining had always been the lifeblood of Butte, and so the community embraced the new mine, and there was little objection to the sacrifice of some of the city’s neighborhoods. The Anaconda Company’s decision to begin open pit mining in Butte was not without its reasons. In 1955, copper prices were the highest they had been since the end of World War I in 1918. And the following year, 1956, would mark the highest copper price seen until 2006 (with the exception of the lone year 1974, when copper briefly spiked due to an end to price controls and the ongoing demands of the Vietnam War). Those high prices gave the Company a big incentive to rethink its Butte operations. The most accessible parts of the Butte hill had already been mined out. Legend has it that Marcus Daly’s original ore vein was 30% copper. That is extraordinarily rich ore, and the veins of that quality could not last- as a point of comparison, when it opened, the ore mined at the Berkeley was about 0.75% copper, and the ore being mined at Montana Resources Continental Pit operation today is approximately 0.35% copper. In order to economically extract copper from lower grade ore, the Pit was born. Aside from, and more important, than economic motives, the Pit was also opened because of the simple fact that open pit mining is much less hazardous for the miners themselves. Best guesses put the number of deaths in Butte’s underground mines, which operated for about a century, from the 1860’s through 1976, at around 2,500, an average of about 25 deaths per year. Only six fatalities occurred over the life of the Berkeley, which was operated for 27 years from 1955 through 1982. The Continental Pit, which has been mined intermittently since 1980, has seen only one death. But steep, continuous declines in copper prices following the 1974 spike led to the eventual shut down of Berkeley operations in 1982. Throughout the history of mining in Butte, pumps were used to dewater the underground mines and, later, the Berkeley Pit. On April 23, 1982, ARCO, the owners of the former Anaconda Company holdings, announced that they were suspending their Butte operations. Along with the announcement, the underground pumps in the Kelley Mine were shut down. The result: the underground mines and the Berkeley Pit began to fill with acidic water. The great advantage of the Berkeley is that it acts as a terminal sink: all contaminated ground and surface waters from Butte’s East Camp flow to it and are captured in it. Since 1982, ARCO, Montana Resources, the EPA, the DEQ and the local community have risen to the unique challenges of managing the Pit. Historically, Butte’s resourcefulness made it a successful mining town that has far outlived the boom-and-bust cycle of many similar communities. That resourcefulness is today being applied in new ways in the many environmental restoration projects underway in the area, and in the management of the Berkeley Pit, all while mining continues successfully, and in ways that alleviate the impacts on the environment, just next door to the Berkeley at the Continental Pit. In fact it can be said that mining continues today in the Berkeley Pit as Montana Resources copper recovery project is recovering the dissolved copper that exists in the water contained within the walls of the Pit (see "Montana Resources mines the water" for details). Just as Butte transitioned from underground to open pit mining in 1955, in 2009 we are in the midst of an exciting transition from a landscape scarred by mining to a landscape that is restored where possible and managed responsibly. For more stories from the current issue of PitWatch, go here. |
