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Berkeley Pit
The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine in the western United States, located in Butte, Montana. It is long by wide, with an approximate depth of . It is filled to a depth of about with water that is heavily acidic (2.5 pH level), about the acidity of Coca-Cola, lemon juice,Edwin Dobb. "New Life in a Death Trap". ''Discover'', 2000. or gastric acid. As a result, the pit is laden with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals that leach from the rock, including copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid. The mine was opened in 1955 and operated by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, and later by the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), until its closure on Earth Day in 1982. When the pit was closed, the water pumps in the nearby Kelley Mine, below the surface, were turned off, and groundwater from the surrounding aquifers began to slowly fill the Berkeley Pit, rising at about the rate of per month. Since its closure, the water level in the pit has risen to ...
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Berkeley Pit Butte, Montana
Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to: Places Australia * Berkeley, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong Canada * Berkeley, Ontario, a community in Grey County United Kingdom * Berkeley (hundred), an administrative division from late Saxon period to the 19th century * Berkeley, Gloucestershire, a town in England United States * Berkeley, California, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area, the largest city named Berkeley * Berkeley, Denver, a neighborhood in Denver, Colorado * Berkeley, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago * Berkeley, Missouri, a northwestern suburb of St. Louis * Berkeley Township, Ocean County, New Jersey * Berkeley, Rhode Island * Berkeley, Virginia (other) * Berkeley, West Virginia * Berkeley County (other) People * Berkeley (given n ...
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Heavy Metals
upright=1.2, Crystals of osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead">lead.html" ;"title="osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead">osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead Heavy metals are generally defined as metals with relatively high density, densities, atomic weights, or atomic numbers. The criteria used, and whether metalloids are included, vary depending on the author and context. In metallurgy, for example, a heavy metal may be defined on the basis of density, whereas in physics the distinguishing criterion might be atomic number, while a chemist would likely be more concerned with chemical property, chemical behaviour. More specific definitions have been published, but none of these have been widely accepted. The definitions surveyed in this article encompass up to 96 out of the 118 known chemical elements; only mercury, lead and bismuth meet all of them. Despite this lack of agreement, the term (plural or singular) is widely used i ...
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Berkeley Pit1984
Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to: Places Australia * Berkeley, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong Canada * Berkeley, Ontario, a community in Grey County United Kingdom * Berkeley (hundred), an administrative division from late Saxon period to the 19th century * Berkeley, Gloucestershire, a town in England United States * Berkeley, California, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area, the largest city named Berkeley * Berkeley, Denver, a neighborhood in Denver, Colorado * Berkeley, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago * Berkeley, Missouri, a northwestern suburb of St. Louis * Berkeley Township, Ocean County, New Jersey * Berkeley, Rhode Island * Berkeley, Virginia (other) * Berkeley, West Virginia * Berkeley County (other) People * Berkeley (given n ...
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Acid Mine Drainage
Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), or acid rock drainage (ARD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines. Acid rock drainage occurs naturally within some environments as part of the rock weathering process but is exacerbated by large-scale earth disturbances characteristic of mining and other large construction activities, usually within rocks containing an abundance of sulfide minerals. Areas where the earth has been disturbed (e.g. construction sites, subdivisions, and transportation corridors) may create acid rock drainage. In many localities, the liquid that drains from coal stocks, coal handling facilities, coal washeries, and coal waste tips can be highly acidic, and in such cases it is treated as acid rock drainage. This liquid often contains highly toxic metals, such as copper or iron. These, combined with reduced pH, have a detrimental impact on the streams aquatic environments. The same type of chemical reactions and pro ...
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Sulfide Mineral
The sulfide minerals are a class of minerals containing sulfide (S2−) or disulfide (S22−) as the major anion. Some sulfide minerals are economically important as metal ores. The sulfide class also includes the selenides, the tellurides, the arsenides, the antimonides, the bismuthinides, the sulfarsenides and the sulfosalts.http://www.minerals.net/mineral/sort-met.hod/group/sulfgrp.htm Minerals.net Dana Classification, SulfidesKlein, Cornelis and Cornelius S. Hurlbut, Jr., 1986, ''Manual of Mineralogy'', Wiley, 20th ed., pp 269-293 Sulfide minerals are inorganic compounds. Minerals Common or important examples include: * Acanthite *Chalcocite *Bornite *Galena *Sphalerite * Chalcopyrite * Pyrrhotite * Millerite * Pentlandite * Covellite * Cinnabar * Realgar *Orpiment * Stibnite *Pyrite * Marcasite *Molybdenite Sulfarsenides: *Cobaltite *Arsenopyrite * Gersdorffite Sulfosalts: * Pyrargyrite * Proustite *Tetrahedrite * Tennantite * Enargite * B ...
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Pyrite
The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Fe S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue give it a superficial resemblance to gold, hence the well-known nickname of ''fool's gold''. The color has also led to the nicknames ''brass'', ''brazzle'', and ''Brazil'', primarily used to refer to pyrite found in coal. The name ''pyrite'' is derived from the Greek (), 'stone or mineral which strikes fire', in turn from (), 'fire'. In ancient Roman times, this name was applied to several types of stone that would create sparks when struck against steel; Pliny the Elder described one of them as being brassy, almost certainly a reference to what we now call pyrite. By Georgius Agricola's time, , the term had become a generic term for all of the sulfide minerals. Pyrite is usually found associated with other sulfides or oxides in quartz v ...
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Superfund (environmental Law)
Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The program is designed to investigate and clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances. Sites managed under this program are referred to as "Superfund" sites. There are 40,000 federal Superfund sites across the country, and approximately 1,300 of those sites have been listed on the National Priorities List (NPL). Sites on the NPL are considered the most highly contaminated and undergo longer-term remedial investigation and remedial action (cleanups). The EPA seeks to identify parties responsible for hazardous substances released to the environment (polluters) and either compel them to clean up the sites, or it may undertake the cleanup on its own using the Superfund (a trust fund) and seek to recover those costs from the ...
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Water Table
The water table is the upper surface of the zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with water. It can also be simply explained as the depth below which the ground is saturated. The water table is the surface where the water pressure head is equal to the atmospheric pressure (where gauge pressure = 0). It may be visualized as the "surface" of the subsurface materials that are saturated with groundwater in a given vicinity. The groundwater may be from precipitation or from groundwater flowing into the aquifer. In areas with sufficient precipitation, water infiltrates through pore spaces in the soil, passing through the unsaturated zone. At increasing depths, water fills in more of the pore spaces in the soils, until a zone of saturation is reached. Below the water table, in the phreatic zone (zone of saturation), layers of permeable rock that yield groundwater are called aquifers. In less permeable soils, such as ...
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Groundwater
Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock become completely saturated with water is called the water table. Groundwater is recharged from the surface; it may discharge from the surface naturally at springs and seeps, and can form oases or wetlands. Groundwater is also often withdrawn for agricultural, municipal, and industrial use by constructing and operating extraction wells. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, also called groundwater hydrology. Typically, groundwater is thought of as water flowing through shallow aquifers, but, in the technical sense, it can also contain soil moisture, permafros ...
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Earth Day
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. The official theme for 2022 is Invest In Our Planet. In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day". Denis and ...
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Atlantic Richfield Company
ARCO ( ) is a brand of gasoline stations currently owned by Marathon Petroleum after BP sold its rights. BP commercializes the brand in Northern California, Oregon and Washington, while Marathon has rights for the rest of the United States and in Mexico. ARCO had been established in 1966 as the "Atlantic Richfield Company", an independent oil and gas company formed after the merger of Atlantic Petroleum and the Richfield Oil Corporation. History From 1966 to 2000, the 'Atlantic Richfield Company', doing business as ARCO, was an independent American oil company with operations in the United States, Indonesia, the North Sea, the South China Sea, and Mexico. After its acquisition of Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1977, ARCO had owned hard rock mines in several western states, which has created environmental clean-up liabilities to the company to this day even after the mines were closed in the early 1980s. In 2000, BP acquired ARCO for $26.8 billion. ARCO's retail and mark ...
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Anaconda Copper Mining Company
The Anaconda Copper Mining Company, known as the Amalgamated Copper Company between 1899 to 1915, was an American mining company headquartered in Butte, Montana. It was one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century and one of the largest mining companies in the world for much of the 20th century. Marcus Daly bought the original silver mine, named the Anaconda, in 1880. Daly partnered with George Hearst, James Ben Ali Haggin and Lloyd Tevis in 1881 to develop it, and the company expanded dramatically in 1882 with the discovery of huge copper deposits. In 1883, Daly began building a smelter and the town of Anaconda to process copper mined in Butte. In 1899, with Hearst and Tevis deceased, Haggin retired and Daly restructured the company, into the Amalgamated Copper Company bringing in H H Rogers and William Rockefeller. By 1910, Amalgamated had expanded its operations and bought the assets of all other copper companies operating in Butte. In 1922, Anaconda bought mining op ...
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