Company mining Berkeley Pit water for copper

Prompted by soaring copper prices, Montana Resources has resumed "mining" water from the Berkeley Pit, running millions of gallons of the metals-tainted water through a process to remove the valuable copper.

Montana Resources Vice President Steve Walsh said about 13 million gallons of water a day are being pumped from the pit to a "precipitation plant," a low-tech operation where water flows through piles of scrap iron and a chemical reaction causes copper to be drawn from the water.

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Walsh said the company’s goal is to retrieve as much as 400,000 pounds of copper each month.

"There’s a lot of copper in there," he said.

With copper selling for more than $1.30 a pound, Walsh said it made sense to try to take as much copper from the water as possible. However, he said the venture probably wouldn’t be economical if the pumps and the plant weren’t already in place.

The water is being drawn from the far west side of the pit and pumped all the way up and around the south and east sides of the pit to the plant.