
The Berkeley pit - aurelianito
http://failuremag.com/index.php/site/print/the_berkeley_pit/
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kevingadd
I love that they were able to patent a naturally-occurring organism. We need
more systems in place like that so that the entirety of nature can be locked
up behind patent license fees and legal protections to keep the rest of
humanity from benefiting.

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JonnieCache
_"The pit and its water present a serious environmental problem because the
water, with dissolved oxygen, allows pyrite and sulfide minerals in the ore
and wall rocks to decay, releasing acid. When the pit water level eventually
reaches the natural water table, estimated to occur by around 2020, the pit
water will reverse flow back into surrounding groundwater, polluting into
Silver Bow Creek which is the headwaters of Clark Fork River.[1] The acidic
water in the pit carries a heavy load of dissolved heavy metals. In fact, the
water contains so much dissolved metal (up to 187 ppm Cu) that some material
is mined directly from the water."_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit>

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colanderman
I don't get it. Do you expect me to read the entire Wikipedia article to infer
what your response to some part of that paragraph is?

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JeremyStein
That wasn't a quote from the article; it was a quote from the wikipedia page.

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guelo
This is a propaganda article by BP. It says that the mine were the ones that
first brought thee water to the scientists for study. And then, even tough the
scientists have not discovered anything useful the article is full of talk of
"potential" compounds for the treatment of a bunch of diseases, but it's all
speculation. Also there were several notes through the article of concern
about the costs to BP which made me more suspicious because a normal reporter
wouldn't write that.

~~~
ams6110
The piece says that the water samples were provided by the Montana Bureau of
Mines and Geology, not BP. Why would a "normal reporter" not include factual
information about the costs to the responsible party?

Do you have any proof of your claim, or is this speculation?

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ams6110
A couple of stories about about toxic sites have hit the front page this
weekend, both associated with metal mining operations.

Makes me wonder what the environment is like around the mines producing metals
for batteries in the so-called "green" hybrid and electric vehicles.

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karamazov
If there are so many beneficial organisms coming out of this one contaminated
environment, we should create small toxic environments in laboratories and see
what grows there. A bathtub or swimming pool filled with heavy metals, acid,
and yeast could apparently yield a lot of organisms for study.

~~~
djacobs
An artificial environment would be ideal, but it's currently impossible. The
issue is: how do we recreate the environment with the right organisms? How do
we know that they're all growing like they would in their natural environment?

I remember in an environmental micro lab, one of our exercises was to grow a
newly 'cultivable' bacterium. For a while, it had been considered
uncultivable, and all research was done in the field. There had been a
breakthrough at the time, though, that let us actually culture this one
species in the lab. We used the technique outlined here:

[http://www.northeastern.edu/adc/publications/Lewis2010JARevi...](http://www.northeastern.edu/adc/publications/Lewis2010JAReview.pdf)

It took us about a week to set up the proper environment and rig a filtration
system to approximate the right conditions. A quarter of the class couldn't
even get the bacteria to show up after all of that work. (And that was with
detailed instructions!) Bottom line: figuring out growth conditions for novel
species is hard, especially with the relatively mysterious archaebacteria.
Until this decade, the primary way of growing them was to see what showed up
on a petri dish with a generic broth.

The reason this pit (and others) is crucial is that it holds tons of
unidentified bacteria, bacteria that probably wouldn't survive transportation
to a controlled environment. We only know they're there because of the bits of
DNA we've recovered from dead organisms. Without knowing what we were trying
to recreate, our class wouldn't have been able to carry out our controlled
experiment. The same probably holds true for the organisms in this pit.

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kabdib
> ... but the only place [the yeast] had ever been seen was in the rectal
> swabs of geese

Gahhh. This means that someone was taking rectal swabs of geese prior to . . .
well, anything. Just in case.

It's a wide, weird world, with many wonders. Good lord, what a curious species
we are.

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weeksie
That's fascinating. My mom lives in Butte, and I've been out that way several
times. It's a bit jaw-dropping to stand at the edge of that thing. At least
something good has come out of that monstrosity.

