Notable case, Butte, Montana, United States

Butte (Berkeley Pit and Silver Bow Creek)

An open-pit copper mine closed in 1982 that filled with acidic, metal-laden water, at the centre of a mining district whose waste contaminated 190 km of valley.

At a glance

Activity
1955–1982
Media
soil, groundwater, surface water, sediment
Kind of site
mining, smelter
National list
Listed 1983National Priorities List
  1. Area. The pit is about one mile by half a mile and 540 m deep. Contamination extends about 120 miles (190 km) down the valley to Milltown Dam.

Contaminants

Metals

Metalloids

Other inorganics

National list

On the list (final)United States

Superfund National Priorities List (NPL)

Listed
1983
Official id
MTD980502777 ↗
About this list

The list of contaminated sites that are national priorities for federal clean-up under CERCLA (Superfund, 1980), kept by EPA (40 CFR Part 300, Appendix B). Listing makes a site eligible for long-term remedial action paid by the Superfund; sites are proposed and then listed through Federal Register notices, and deleted when no further response is needed.

Includes federal facilities (Defense, Energy). Dates are the years of the Federal Register notices (final listing, deletion); 'listed' is empty for proposed sites. Some sites still on the list have had partial deletions. Contaminants and media: contaminants of concern from decision documents (RODs, ROD amendments, ESDs; EPA, fiscal years 1981-2024, SEMS document HQ/406315); for sites with no decision document (mostly proposed or recently listed) the contaminants are those EPA records for the site (FOIA-015, document HQ/406366), with no medium. 'Deleted' means EPA found no further response needed, which can include land-use controls still in force.

Status

Remediation under way

The site has seven operable units. Pit water has been pumped and treated since October 2019 to keep it below the critical level of 5,410 feet. EPA has completed the sixth five-year review, and in 2026 cleanup of urban soils is still under way.

Story

The Berkeley Pit was opened in 1955 by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and later passed to Atlantic Richfield (ARCO). It closed on 22 April 1982; when the pumps in the nearby Kelley Mine were turned off, groundwater began to fill it. It now holds about 270 metres of water at pH 4.1–4.5, rich in copper, arsenic, cadmium and zinc. In 1996, 342 dead snow geese were recovered there; in November 2016, between 3,000 and 4,000.

Downstream, Silver Bow Creek served for more than a century as the sewer for mine and smelter waste; a flood in 1908 spread metals and arsenic across the floodplain. The Horseshoe Bend treatment plant has run since 2003 and the plant for pit water since 2019. In 1999 Atlantic Richfield agreed to pay $215 million towards restoring the creek.

Timeline

  1. 1908A flood spreads mine waste along Silver Bow Creek.
  2. 1955The Berkeley Pit opens.
  3. 1982The pit closes and the pumps are turned off.
  4. 1983EPA action begins.
  5. 2003Horseshoe Bend treatment plant starts operating.
  6. 2016Thousands of snow geese die after landing on the pit water.
  7. 2019Pumping and treatment of pit water begins.

Remediation

  1. 2003water treatmentHorseshoe Bend treatment plant; from 2019 a plant for pit water with a capacity of 10 million gallons a day.
  2. 1995tailings removal and stream restorationRemoval of tailings and restoration of the Silver Bow Creek corridor, decided in 1995.

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Plants

Fungi

The rest are on the contaminant pages.

Nearby

Sources

  1. Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area, Butte, MT, US EPA, 2026
  2. Berkeley Pit, Wikipedia, 2026
  3. Silver Bow Creek, Wikipedia, 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.