April 16
This morning I drove forty miles from Salt Lake City to Bingham Canyon Copper Mine. It’s the largest pit dug by humans on this planet, now nearly three miles across and three quarters of a mile deep -- and growing. From it 18 millions tons of copper have been extracted since 1906. One ton of ore produces only about 10.6 pounds of copper. That's approximately 339,000,000 tons of ore that have been dug and processed. As a consequence the landscape for miles around the pit is a wasteland covered with the extracted ore.
Landscape on the way to the pit
The pit
The picture does not do justice to the immensity of the pit. The yellow electric shovel on the right, which looks like a toy from the rim of the pit, has a 56-cubic yard dipper that can scoop approximately 98 tons of ore; the equivalent of about fifty automobiles. It weighs 3.2 million pounds.
3.2 million pound monster
Out of the pit
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