open-pit

adjective

US

: involving the removal of the surface of a large area of land to get at a mineral or other material that is near to the surface

an open-pit mine

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Chuquicamata, the world’s largest open-pit copper mine, a hole big enough to swallow Central Park, is nine miles north of the city. —Maggie Shipstead Anthony Cotsifas, New York Times, 10 May 2023

Opponents say the plans for a large open-pit mine will destroy fisheries worth about $2 billion annually. —Alex Demarban, Anchorage Daily News, 26 Apr. 2023

Environmentalists were angered when Zambian authorities supported a huge open-pit mine for copper in Lower Zambezi National Park last year. —Nimi Princewill, CNN, 26 Apr. 2023

As proposed, the open-pit mine would be one of the world’s largest. —Alex Demarban, Anchorage Daily News, 6 Apr. 2023

That last deployment—a six-month rotation in 2020—sent him to the outskirts of a small city in Niger where an American military installation sat just a few hundred yards downwind from the largest open-pit uranium mine in the world. —Michael Venutolo-mantovani, The New Republic, 21 Mar. 2023

Rare earth minerals are extracted through one of two methods: Drilling or open-pit mining. —Travis Hall, Field & Stream, 13 Mar. 2023

The open-pit mine was set to be located about 6 miles from the Great Barrier Reef. —Nick Roll, The Christian Science Monitor, 13 Mar. 2023

Associated Press ALXA LEAGUE, China – Work crews trying to find 47 people missing after a collapse at an open-pit mine in northern China have had to change their excavation methods to avoid causing more landslides, state media reported Friday. —Ng Han Guan, USA TODAY, 25 Feb. 2023

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