the pit. >> anthony: right. >> aaron: in the early sixties. >> anthony: for the first seventy years it was hard-rock mining; blasting and digging tunnels deep into the ground. by the 1950s, mining was moving increasingly to above ground. open pit, which meant fewer jobs and a bigger more visible footprint. by 1955 the berkeley pit had become the largest open pit copper mine in the world. as it expanded it devoured meaderville and the surrounding neighborhoods. there was money down there to be dug out of the ground and that's what butte had always been about from the beginning. in 1983 the pumps that held back the ground water from thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the city were turned off. the pit filled with thirty billion gallons of water. and as mine tailings and mineral refuse contaminated the water it became a giant insanely toxic lake of sulfuric acid. a monument to greed and heedless exploitation of the earth and something eerily, yet, tragically beautiful. if you're still living here, you've got to have some kind of weird perverse pride in the pit. >> aaron: absolutely! >> anthony: i mean, correct me if i'm wrong. aaron: no, you nailed it.