Gravel pit

[1] Gravel pit lakes are typically nutrient rich and can support thriving ecosystems, but can also present environmental issues such as the release of toxic metals into watersheds from the exposed rock.

Gravel pits are located where there are rich sources of materials suitable to be crushed into aggregate, often at sites of fluvial, glacial, or floodplain geological deposits.

[10] For example, along the Dempster Highway that stretches across the isolated northern region of Yukon Territory, Canada, there are several gravel pits in use for road maintenance and several more that have fallen into disuse.

[17][14] The culprit of these issues is the fine silica dust created and stirred up by aggregate extraction processes and carried in the wind, which people breathe in and coats surfaces such as nearby homes and plants.

[13] There have been widespread movements by communities affected by gravel pit operations to have them moved away to less windy, residential, or agricultural areas, and for better safety precautions to be adopted for worker health.

[19][20] Many become informal recreation sites or transition into wetlands, lakes, or ponds as they fill with water, but remediation can help this process and reduce safety hazards they impose in their industrial state.

[20][21] Remediation programs can be undertaken to build abandoned gravel pits into sites of thriving wildlife habitats, parks or farmland, and/or be flooded and stocked for recreational fishing and to create aquatic ecosystems.