Wednesday, September 29, 2010






       And, for extra credit, how badly polluted is it?  




  1. I recently heard a podcast where scientists talked about this. As a query, I used: mine butte water pollluted. The 2nd hit on the results was a Wikipedia entry on the Berkeley Pit. Links in that entry take you to articles and web pages detailing the depth of the pollution of the lake that has formed in the pit.

  2. Okay here's my method:
    1. "polluted butte" - I got some great snippets talking about how polluted Butte, Montana really is.

    2. "epa polluted butte" - I decided to throw in a more official keyword because the first results were too varied (forums, news, random sites, etc.) You will notice from my above word order that I am not using instant

    3. AHA! The third result for the above search was "Berkeley Pit (Butte) — Montana Environmental Information Center"

    4. I start typing "Berkeley Pit" into Google and Suggest confirms my suspicions and finishes my work by suggesting "berkeley pit lake butte montana"

    5. So, fellow searcher, I believe your polluted lake is called "Berkeley Pit"

  3. Similar searches to the above got me to Berkeley Pit. Didn't use the Wikipedia article though.

    Extra credit - The ph level of the water in the pit is around 2.4 making it acidic. This is allowing the leaching of heavy metals from the rock bed such as arsenic to pollute the water. They are watching the water rise to point where it will contaminate ground water and then entering a major creek. Water level is predicted to hit this level around 2022.

    Here is my search story