On my way to the library today I heard one of those stories on Public Radio International that makes me sit in the car in the parking lot long after I’ve arrived at my destination, just listening. The program in question, Radio Lab, is one of my favorites, and you can listen to this particular episode here, but I’ll give you a basic recap.
There’s a place in Butte, Montana were 1/3 of our nation’s copper came from at one time. It’s called Berkeley Pit, and it’s a pit mine that’s a mile long, a half mile wide, and a third of a mile deep. They also used to extract gold and silver there. But when the mine finally played itself out it was abandoned and began filling with water.
Now it’s a lake, but the weirdest lake you will ever see in your life. It’s bright red and yellow and a sick green and full of toxic chemicals like arsenic, cadmium, zinc, copper, and cobalt. It’s an acidic soup, basically, and that’s why it’s become a Superfund site. The water keeps rising, and if it gets much higher it will leech into the ground water, and needless to say that’s a big fat problem for the residents of Butte.
But here’s the weird thing about the Berkeley Pit. Some good has come of it, too. Scientists have discovered some extremophiles that actually thrive in that toxic stew in the form of fungus and algae that, it turns out, may inhibit leukemia! Now, how cool is that? You can get more technical details about that at the Chemotherapy Advisor website here.
And in an interesting plot twist, back in 1995, 300 snow geese landed on this deadly lake to wait out a storm, and naturally they didn’t survive. But there’s this yeast that has heretofore only been found in anal swabs of snow geese (and don’t ask me who decided that it was important to take anal swabs of snow geese, but there you have it), and ever since 1995, this yeast has been thriving in Berkeley Pit, and it turns out that it likes to eat heavy metals and is helping to clean the water. What are the odds? Not that you’d want to take a bath there despite their cleaning efforts, but still.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Nature is awesome.
[Image credits: aridni.com and chemotherapyadvisor.com]
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