Arizona

Vern, here are some nice pics my son in law, Brandon Laplander, sent me today. This is the lake/pond shown in the aerial view on the K website, at the bottom of the pit. In the first pic, where my son in law's friend is shown, you can see where there is a waterfall sometimes, when they pump water from one side of the pit to the other, so that they can work on one side of the pit after pumping water from it. He says the waterfall looks/sounds like any waterfall in the mountains. They're installing pumps that will be able to pump the water vertically to the top of the pit and on to the mills, etc. where they can use it. As you will read, there's a LOT of water down there, and deep enough( 120 ft.) that any scuba diving club would have a ball.... could even put a speed boat in it for skiing, etc. and the water is really clear, as it shows in the pics. My son in law is shown in the 4th pic.

All that is needed is some fake Palm trees around the lake/pond, to lok like one's in the South Pacific. My son in law works out ot the Engineering dept. and has been with ASARCO for 15 yrs. If it's 106° here in town, at the bottom of the pit it's probably 120° ( 1300 ft. ft. down below the surface level of the mine). What you see running across the surface of the water are the hoses used to move water from one side of the pit to the other. I hope this goes through to you o.k.

Here's a few pictures of the water in the bottom of the mine. The last time I calculated it, it was right around 66,000,000 gallons. It's about 120ft deep as well in the deepest spot. It's about 1300ft down from the surface level of the mine.

The first photo is of Paul walking down the creek where the water runs down ramp from the waterfall which wasn't running this morning. Usually it's filled to the top. The waterfall is behind my truck but like I said, we're not pumping from the other side right now for some reason. I keep telling them the pump needs to run, but they never listen... lol

On a side note, if you look in the back ground of the photos, you can see the shovels bringing the benches down. We only have three benchs to go before we're at the same elevation as the water. Which means all the water you're looking at, needs to get pumped back out pretty fast otherwise we're going to have shovels sitting because of the water.