Pity the snow geese that settled on lake berkeley as a stopover one stormy night in November 1995. The vast lake, covering almost 700 acres of a former open-pit copper mine in Butte, Montana, holds some 30 billion gallons of highly acidic, metal-laden water— scarcely a suitable refuge for migrating birds stalled by harsh weather. So when the flock rose up and turned southward the following morning, almost 350 carcasses were left behind. Autopsies showed their insides were lined with burns and festering sores from exposure to high concentrations of copper, cadmium, and arsenic.
Today one need only stand on the viewing platform and look at the pit— the lifeless yellow and gray walls that stretch for a mile in one direction and a mile and a half in the other and the dark, eerily placid lake— to see that it's hostile toward living things. Surely nothing could survive these ...
