Abstract
Like most good mysteries, it began on a dark and stormy night. On the morning of Nov. 14, 1995, residents of Butte, Montana, found hundreds of dead snow geese floating in the runoff and groundwater that had flooded a copper mine at the edge of town. A squall the night before had forced an emergency landing. When they were found, burn sores dotted their bodies, and their white feathers were dyed a sickly, jaundiced orange. What happened to the birds wasn’t actually a mystery. They’d had the misfortune of landing on the toxic waters filling the remnants of what used to be one of Montana’s richest copper mines, the so-called Berkeley Pit. Now a Superfund site, meaning it’s designated by the US Environmental Protection Agency for toxic waste cleanup, it was filled with a deadly broth that had a pH (2.5) rivaling that of sulfuric acid. Water bubbling up from
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