evolution means a silver lining from a copper lake

Update: Now, with photos taken during a recent road trip. It cost $2 for the privilege, so you're welcome. The lake, an accidental laboratory, is massive, more than a mile in each direction, and 1800 feet deep.

Berkeley Pit Lake, also in Butte, filled with groundwater after the copper mine closed in 1982. Dissolved metal compounds such as iron pyrites give the lake a pH of 2.5 that makes it impossible for most aquatic life to survive. In 1995 Stierle discovered novel forms of fungi and bacteria in the lake. More recently her team has found a strain of the pithomyces fungi producing a compound that binds to a receptor that causes migraines and could block headaches, while a strain of penicillium fungi makes a different compound that inhibits the growth of lung cancer cells.

Not much more at the original article. I'll see what I can dredge up elsewhere. (Yes, the pun is intended.)

Added: There's much more out there, especially at this 1999 WaPo article. The research began seven years ago and is just now starting to bear fruit.