Colorado Mines Project

Mining; an essential part of a functioning society. Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials including coal, gold, silver, and the most abundant and useful, copper. Mining has been a main source of income since prehistoric times, whether it be for steel, or even gun powder, it has benefited humanity immensely since discovered. Mining can extract beneficial materials such as copper and gold. Copper is heavily used in electronics and piping due to its beneficial qualities. Copper is an excellent conductor, can easily be bent and sturdy, and very resistant to corrosion. Gold conducts electricity, does not tarnish, very easy to work, and can be drawn into wire. Although there are clear benefits to mining, there are also heavy consequences. These consequences have severe environmental impacts which include The environmental impact of mining includes erosion, formation of sinkholes, loss of biodiversity, and contamination of soil, groundwater, surface water by chemicals from mining processes as well as Acid mine drainage. In this project, we are focusing on two particular mines; Berkeley, Montana mine, and the Summitville mine in Colorado.

The Summitville mine in Colorado in an open pit mine found in Del Norte, Colorado at a whopping elevation of 11,500 feet above sea level. An open pit mine is when blocks of earth are dug from the surface to extract the ore contained in them. During the mining process, the surface of the land is excavated, forming a deeper and deeper pit until the mining operation finishes. Summitville mine is used to heavily extract both gold and silver. This site was functioning 1870 to about 1974, until gold and silver production lapsed. When this site lapsed, the company filed for bankruptcy, it became a superfund site. Superfund is the name given to the environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites. Essentially, the government has to take care of abandoned mines. This mine has created massive environmental issues because no clean up efforts were performed by the company that mined. Commercial mining at the spot began in 1984 by the company Summitville Consolidated Mining Company, Inc. (SCMCI), which was a subsidiary of the Canadian-based Galactic Resources Ltd. The Summitville mine is a silver and gold mine, which is used in jewelry and other products as well as some electronics. The mining process that was used at the Summitville mine was heap leaching. Heap leaching was used for the mine, which involved the treatment of pyritic ore with a sodium cyanide solution to leach the gold out of the ore.

In this mine, we see an influx of gold. This however is extremely low grade ore. It takes a lot of money and time to extract the gold. The metal ore is stuck in average rock; Rocks are crushed and melted in order to get an ounce of gold. The mining company isn’t getting that much gold per rock, meaning low grade ore. Why do we need gold? Gold is used for makes excellent jewelry, it is a good material for filling cavities in teeth, and it makes excellent fine wire for electronics. Gold is very reflective, so it is used to protect spacecraft and a satellite from solar radiation.This is important because it helps society function, and improve further knowledge. In order to get gold, Geoscientists look for sighs for gold deposits. In this case, citizens found some gold on the stream and decided there was gold in this general are. Back then, this mine extracted gold from simple panning. Once all the easy gold was recovered, later processing revealed a way to get all the low grade ore. First, we start off with large-scale surface gold mining, using the heap-leach process. Mineralized quartz-latite, a gold-bearing ore, was mined, crushed and stacked or heaped on a multi-layered, lined pad. A solution of sodium cyanide was used to leach gold from the ore, by sprinkling it on the heaped ore and allowing it to percolate down. Then the sodium-cyanide solution was pumped to a facility that removed the gold. These actions greatly increased the acidity and dissolved metals in the surrounding streams, damaging aquatic life. This process contaminated the surface water, groundwater, and soil with copper, cadmium, manganese, zinc, lead, nickel, aluminum, and iron(Costanzi). The company that was operating this mine declared bankruptcy and was therefore not responsible for cleaning up the giant mess that they had created. Because of this unique situation, the EPA had to take over in the cleanup process, and have been working hard to make the area less toxic and dangerous to people, animals, and plants nearby. Their progress on the Summitville mine has been organized for easy viewing by the EPA:

The toxicity of cyanide can extremely harm all kinds of wild life. It can kill fish, as well as flow through the Alamosa River destroying all sorts of farms and crops. The cyanide is extremely dangerous and can devastate the environment including destroying ground water, polluting streams, and killing animals. Increased acid and metal loadings from Summitville are suspected to have caused the 1990 disappearance of stocked fish from Terrace Reservoir and farm holding ponds downstream on the Alamosa River. 

Restoration: It is hard to reinvigorate this part of Colorado. However, several organizations have tried to fix it. The EPA has provided more than $210 million to conduct cleanup work on this project. However, construction work to contain contaminated mine water, construct a new water-treatment plant, enlarge the containment reservoir, and improve the capture or interception of contaminated ground water and surface water was not funded in Fiscal Year 2004. The EPA also claims that it will consider funding new construction work at this site in Fiscal Year 2005. Essentially, guarantying nothing. Till this day, there has not been a cleanup. 

There are no laws forcing the mine owners to clean it up. It is a super funded site. The owners of the mine filed for bankruptcy therefore are not liable to clean it up. Right now, it is the government’s property and is treated as such. The mines owners have tricked the government into making the government clean up their own mess. 

Berkeley mine or Berkeley Pit. In Butte Montana, with the Clark Fork River, has been the center for underground mining since the 1980’s. Open-pit mining began at the Berkeley Pit in 1955 and continued at the Continental Pit until its closure in June 2000. As part of the underground mining activities, ground-water levels had to be continually lowered as mining went deeper. The Berkeley Pit, an open-pit copper mine, meaning it mostly mines copper. Open Pit mining’s is when the waste and ore are completely removed from the sides and bottom of a pit which gradually becomes an enormous canyon like hole. When copper is extracted from this mine, it is usually from high grade ore. We know this because “27 years the Berkeley Pit was mined, a billion tons of various ores were extracted.” This ore contained a lot of more refined copper. Copper is used heavily in today’s society. The Berkeley Mine, located in Butte, Montana is an open pit copper mine. This means that it has the same basic shape as the Summitville mine, an inverted mountain, but instead of mining for gold, this mine is meant for copper. Copper is an extremely important metal in modern society because it is the means for all the modern technology. This is because all wires that are used for electronics use copper to conduct electricity. More important than this use is copper in generators. The generators that spin because of some kinetic force are able to convert the energy to electricity using copper wire spinning around magnetic force, allowing electrons to flow. The pit is one mile long by half a mile wide with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is heavily acidic (2.5 pH level), about the acidity of cola or lemon juice. This acidity is obviously extremely dangerous to life around the mine. Copper sulfate was extracted from the mines in order to make copper.

Copper is used for tubing, wiring and more malleable. We use copper in tubing because it doesn’t corrode and can be used to heat and cold water. It can easily be heated or cooled due to its properties. Copper is durable and recyclable, which means that using copper piping for water pipes will not deplete copper supplies and has a lower impact on the environment than some other choices, like plastic. While the initial cost of copper water pipes may be higher, its durability makes it an excellent long term value. We use copper in wiring because it’s extremely conductive. It means that it’s really easy to transport electricity quickly and safely.  

Three steps are involved in mining-extraction of the rock, mineral processing, and metal purification. In surface mining, the top layers called overburden or gangue, is moved away from the ore vein, and heaped into spoil piles. Then the ore is extracted from the vein and moved into a processing plant. Later the ore is separated in a process called beneficiation. The metal ore proceeds to the purification process while the tailings are heaped in tailings into spoil piles. High quality metals can be refined in a process called smelting. 

Many of the copper minerals or the surrounding minerals contain sulfur. As precipitation falls into the heap piles, the water from the precipitation seeps through pieces of rock. This causes heavy ground water pollution and can destroy the ground water. The contamination resulting from leakage of chemicals also affects the health of the local population due to the population drinking the water. The result can be unnaturally high concentrations of some chemicals, such as arsenic, sulfuric acid, and mercury over a significant area of surface or subsurface. It devastates the surrounding vegetation. The acidity of the liquid in the pit is so great that it is eating away at the rock and spreading the acidic water around to surrounding surface water, groundwater, and soil. Ultimately, about 1,000,000,000 tons of material was mined from the Berkeley Pit. The acidity is so great, that in 1995, a flock of geese landed in the Berkeley pit water, and all 342 geese died. After closer inspection by scientists, it was revealed that the insides of the geese were lined with burns and festering sores from exposure to high concentrations of copper, cadmium, and arsenic, obviously linking the pit to the death of the geese.

To clean up the pit, a treatment plant has started construction to treat the water in the pit and the tailings pond. The treatment plant should be done and will be ready to treat the water and remove the toxins and acidity of the water in 2018.There has been major improvement in this pit. The Horseshoe Bend Water Treatment Plant can be seen on the northeast edge of the Pit. The plant was constructed in 2002-2003. The plant was designed to treat up to 7 million gallons of water per day using lime (calcium oxide) to raise the pH (reduce the acidity of the water) and remove metals. This site is a super funded site, meaning that the owners filed for bankruptcy, so, the government was forced to clean it up due to public concern. The EPA helps analyze and protect the areas that have been identified as Superfund sites and help to resolve the issues that the problem presents to the environment. The Summitville mine is on the National Priorities List, and as of now, the EPA has listed their work as a success, with current human exposures at the site under control and contaminated ground water migration is under control




While searching information about Berkeley mine, I came across a plethora of videos about the improvement of the pit. Countless videos first showing how terrible it was, but then later shows how well it has become. People were now paying to come see it; it’s become a tourist’s site!





WORK CITED

Clark, R.N., King, T.V.V., Ager, C., and Swayze, G.A., 1995, Initial vegetation species and senescence/stress indicator mapping in the San Luis Valley, Colorado using imaging spectrometer data in, Posey, H. H., Pendleton, J. A., and Van Zyl, D., eds: Summitville Forum Proceedings, Colorado Geological Survey,

Horowitz, A.J., and Elrick, K.A., 1995, Sediment-trace element geochemistry of Terrace Reservoir abs] in, Posey, H. H., Pendleton, J. A., and Van Zyl, D., eds: Summitville Forum Proceedings, Colorado Geological Survey, Special

Walton-Day, K., Ortiz, R. F., and von Guerard, P.,1995, Sources of water having low pH and elevated metal concentrations in the upper Alamosa River from the headwaters to the outlet of Terrace Reservoir, south-central Colorado, April-September, 1993, in, Posey, H. H., Pendleton, J. A., and Van Zyl, D., eds: Summitville Forum Proceedings, Colorado Geological Survey,

Walton-Day, K., Ortiz, R. F., and von Guerard, P.,1995, Sources of water having low pH and elevated metal concentrations in the upper Alamosa River from the headwaters to the outlet of Terrace Reservoir, south-central Colorado, April-September, 1993, in, Posey, H. H., Pendleton, J. A., and Van Zyl, D., eds: Summitville Forum Proceedings, Colorado

McClave, M. A. (1973). Control and distribution of supergene enrichment in the Berkeley Pit. inGuidebook. Butte District, Montana: Butte Field Meeting of Society of Economic Geologists. pp. K–1–K–4.

Shovers, B.; Fiege, M.; Martin, D.; Quivik, F. (1991).Butte and Anaconda revisited. SpecialPub. 99. Montana: Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology.

Weed, W. H. (1912). Geology and ore deposits of the Butte District. Professional Paper 74. Montana: U.S. Geological Survey.

Berkeley Pit Public Education Committee Butte-Silver Bow Planning Dept. 155 W. Granite St. Butte, MT 59701

Costanzi, Fran. "EPA." Summitville Mine. EPA, 8 Jan. 2015. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

EPA. Superfund Process. Digital image. San Jacinto River Waste Community Involvement. EPA, 31 July 2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

EPA. "Superfund Sites Where You Live." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 19 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.

Mining-technology.com. Open Pit Mine Planning. Digital image. Marston - Mining Engineers and Consultants. Mining-technology.com, 2015. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

NASA. Berkeley Pit Mine. Digital image. Image of the Day Gallery. NASA, 23 Mar. 2008. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

Williams, Mark. Aerial View of Summitville Mine. Digital image. Landscapes and Water. University of Colorado Boulder, 1995. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.