Postcards from the Edge

August 5, 2018 10:08 AM

More than 3,000 geese died what were surely horrible deaths—some of them washed to shore dead, others sunk into the Pit, while still others took off and were found dead days later in parking lots and other places around the region. And yet right now, before us, the Pit shimmers like a Tahitian lagoon, and I am fully seduced by its aural glow. “Isn’t it something?” whispers Barb.

Toxic Tourism in Montana.
posted by Rumple (22 comments total)

I want the pit to be penpals with the turkmenistan gas crater.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:33 AM on August 5, 2018 [11 favorites]

“Perpetuity is a pretty long time,” Daily explains. “They are going to be required to do this forever. If they make a mistake they will contaminate all of Summit Valley.” He adds another geographical gem that no one else in town has mentioned: Silver Bow Creek, where the treated toxic water from Yankee Doodle will be discharged, the first creek bed that a leaky Pit would find, is one of the headwaters of the Columbia River, which eventually forms the border between Washington and Oregon, and flows right by downtown Portland and into the Pacific. If the remediation project goes wrong, says Daily, “it would probably be the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States.”

Oh. Fun.
posted by Artw at 10:36 AM on August 5, 2018 [13 favorites]

Gimli: "If we cannot pass over the mountain, let us go under it. Let us go through the mines of Moria."

[In Gandalf's eyes there is a shadow of doubt, of fear that lies unsaid. He is conflicted.]

Saruman (voiceover): "Moria… You fear to go into those mines."

[Saruman sits in his study in Orthanc, reading a page in a book of lore written in a strange tongue.]

Saruman: "The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep."

[On Caradhras, Gandalf's eyes glint, fearful.]

Saruman: "You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm:"

[Saruman turns to another page, revealing a mysterious form drawn as blackness and deep fire, with two sparks in the midst of the flame and dark, like eyes.]

Saruman: "Shadow and Flame!"
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:45 AM on August 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

The Berkeley Pit was the home of The Auditor.
posted by lagomorphius at 10:45 AM on August 5, 2018 [14 favorites]

Well, you know what they say — when life gives you lethal concentrations of arsenic in the water, you might as well make arsenic-ade.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 10:49 AM on August 5, 2018 [12 favorites]

I first really learned about the Berkeley Pit when taking a groundwater chemistry course here in Montana. The professor spent quite a lot of attention on the potential time bomb of the water level rising to where it started exchanging with the groundwater system. (He was an interesting character in his own right; he said the first thing he'd do on a new consulting job is make coffee with the local water in order to survey its minerals and pH by taste). The pit really is impressive and beautiful, and ugly, in the strangest way. It's also a case for environmentalism in permanent, accidental monument form: like the article says America's first electrification was wired up by Butte copper. All that wealth came out of the ground, flowed almost entirely out of Montana, made many people rich, and left us holding the toxic craterous bag.

(Butte also has an amazing history from that time period of contentious labor organizing, and of mass immigration. I don't believe any of this is unconnected.)
posted by traveler_ at 10:55 AM on August 5, 2018 [15 favorites]

I had relatives in Butte so went there frequently as a kid. Almost every other visit, the tap water was undrinkable due to some contamination from all the mining there (usually related to the Pit, but not always). I was young, so don't remember too many details, but I remember that announcements would go out to residents in one neighborhood or another and then water delivery or water pick-up points would be set up so people had safe drinking water.

Those dead geese, by the way, led to some fascinating discoveries, covered by Radiolab a number of years ago. I believe the full episode was titled Oops, and it's all worth a listen, especially for the story about the tree.
posted by msbrauer at 12:21 PM on August 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

The Berkeley Pit was the home of The Auditor.

Ha! One of my first FPPs (2005):
https://www.metafilter.com/41227/The-Berkeley-Pit-Mascot
posted by 445supermag at 12:38 PM on August 5, 2018 [5 favorites]

That's just goose-sink. Super necessary.
posted by es_de_bah at 2:19 PM on August 5, 2018

As drought dries out the habitual stopovers for individual flocks of geese in their migrations, the Berkeley pit and its ilk get even more dangerous.

My business partner's usual flock didn't show up this year on her Vashon island property to swim in her pond and eat her huge crop of crabapples, and it's not clear what happened to them.
posted by jamjam at 3:08 PM on August 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thanks goodness Zinke is saving us from the un-American requirement for mining companies to do mitigation or pay for it. Asshole. I really don't know how these people sleep at night.
posted by fshgrl at 3:24 PM on August 5, 2018 [8 favorites]

I was on a bike tour and stopped there. We paid to see a large hole. Mostly I was just sad.
posted by cccorlew at 4:08 PM on August 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think I know where to put the next Trump resort...

Too late. The nearby town of Anaconda, location of the giant smelter that handled all the ore from the Berkeley Pit, is another Superfund site choked with lead and arsenic. A 600 foot tall smokestack at the smelter spread arsenic, sulfur and lead over 300 square miles of Montana countryside.

Instead of removing the toxic soils, they covered them up and funded a Jack Nicklaus designed golf course on top of the smelter spoils. It has lost money almost every year and is nearing shutdown without further subsidies. After all, who drives hundreds of miles to a town of 9000 to play golf for the three months of the year without snow, even if it is a Nicklaus course.
posted by JackFlash at 4:25 PM on August 5, 2018 [3 favorites]

I would say rich people do...

But I guess not enough. But, golf in general is suffering a massive downturn everywhere, there was an FPP about that not too long ago.

I almost always stop at that rest area there by the smelter smokestack. Such beautiful country. Well, not Butte...
posted by Windopaene at 4:51 PM on August 5, 2018

The Goose Ganker arrived, then Done Disappeared.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:12 PM on August 5, 2018

This was a really lovely article, thanks for posting! I was fascinated by the pit but really into the glimpse of Butte, which made my heart ache unexpectedly. I’m from Michigan so booming towns who slid into decline and are now trying to make a comeback one dispensary and coffee shop at a time definitely speak to me. I am not from near Flint so I won’t make any toxic water parallels but I guess they’re obvious.

My favorite quote from the piece was from the book Toxic Tourism, “Tourists dislike tourists because people dislike people. We dislike the fact that we always appear to want to consume more.”
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:39 PM on August 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

It seems like maybe it's better if the town doesn't recover, because then you can actually drain the pit and not worry about the collapsing tunnels? And maybe try to actually fix this rather than put a "eternal maintenance needed otherwise we contaminate half the country" plan in place
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:39 PM on August 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

What an amazing story. I'm especially intrigued by the Canticle for Leibowitz vibe from the idea of getting the Catholic Church to take care of the mess into the distant future. That might be eminently practical, if his holiness would go for it. Still, I wonder if vibratory manner of working doesn't have the right idea: get the disaster over with now rather than hang this sword of Damocles over the decades and centuries yet to come. Easy for me to say since I don't live there, I suppose. But those living along the Columbia River might say it, too.
posted by bryon at 12:08 AM on August 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

I'm especially intrigued by the Canticle for Leibowitz vibe from the idea of getting the Catholic Church to take care of the mess into the distant future.

There's a certain practical sense to the idea of leaning on an organisation that has already lasted ~1500 years, give or take half a millennium, to perform this kind of deep time custodianship.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:53 AM on August 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

It seems like maybe it's better if the town doesn't recover, because then you can actually drain the pit and not worry about the collapsing tunnels?

The "town" is a city of 34,000 people covering over 700 square miles.
posted by JackFlash at 9:22 AM on August 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

And maybe try to actually fix this rather than put a "eternal maintenance needed otherwise we contaminate half the country" plan in place

There's nothing particularly unusual about "eternal maintenance." There are a lot of large cities below major river dams that require "eternal maintenance." One single year in which the gates and spillways are not maintained and those dams will fail, wiping out the cities below.

The "eternal maintenance" thing is really quite simple. It's just a matter of arguing over who is going to pay for it.
posted by JackFlash at 9:51 AM on August 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

The history of pre-Pit copper mining in Butte is pretty interesting, too. Dashiel Hammett's Red Harvest is most likely based on the corruption and pro- and anti- labor factions in the city. Three powerful "Copper Kings" warred between themselves for the richest veins of ore and weren't above dynamiting a competitor's shaft to slow down production.

Copper money played a big hand in Montana politics, of course, probably none more obvious than when William Clark bought himself a Senate seat.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:31 AM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]