Mining continues at the Continental Pit. Nearby is the Berkeley Pit, a site for acid mine drainage that poses an opportunity for extracting valuable metals.
There’s a tale told about a miner who found copper cans in his garbage dump in the early days of mining. Wastewater from copper mining had flowed through his land, he said, and turned steel cans into copper. The story might be apocryphal, but the process is real, and it’s called cementation. Montana Resources, the mining company that took over from the Anaconda Copper Company, still uses this alchemical trick in a process at its Continental Pit mine in Butte, Mont.
Next to the mine is the Berkeley Pit, which is filled with 50 billion gallons of a highly acidic, toxic brew. Montana Resources pipes liquid from the pit, enabling it to cascade onto piles of scrap iron. The iron becomes copper and is gathered for production.
While methods to remove metals from water have been around a long time, in recent years the global scramble for metals critical to manufacturing and technology advances has given birth to a new generation of extraction technologies and processes. One of the mineral-rich sources researchers are focused on is wastewater, including the brine from desalination plants, oil and gas fracking water and wastewater from mining.
For the rest of this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/science/berkeley-mine-pit-rare-earths.html