Cabinet mum on acid mine drainage report

A report on the management of acid mine drainage in Gauteng has been put to the cabinet but details of its recommendations will not be released until Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa approves it.

The report, driven by her department but drawn up by a team of experts, apparently seeks ways to draw private sector mining companies that are still operating in Gauteng into the process of extracting the acid mine water and cleansing it. The level of the underground acid water is now 500m below the surface, 50m higher than in the middle of 2010.

Cornelius Ruiters, the deputy director-general of water affairs, said he could not divulge details of the report as it was up to the minister to release it once the cabinet had perused it. It is understood that the cabinet received the report last week. Molewa’s spokesman Mandla Mathabula was not available for comment.

The problem, according to DA MP Gareth Morgan, was already acute with the Grootvlei mine at Ekurhuleni pumping out 40 megalitres of water a day. While some attempt was at least being made at pumping, it was being channelled, untreated, into the Blesbokspruit, which feeds the Maryvale wetland.

Civil society organisations said the Department of Water Affairs had failed to deal with what they referred to as the “dysfunctional” Grootvlei mine, putting the lives of mine staff at risk.

On the East Rand the acid water had already been decanting since January 2010.

“It is literally flowing out of the ground,” said Morgan, noting that the spillage was taking place on the property of Rand Uranium and was flowing into the Tweelopiespruit. Of the 50 megalitres that was decanting daily, only about 15 megalitres was being treated.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment’s Mariette Liefferink, Dina Townsend of the Centre for Environmental Rights and Earthlife Africa’s Judith Taylor said that since the cabinet’s inter-ministerial committee met last September “it has failed to take any significant steps to address and halt the ongoing discharge”.

Molewa replied to Morgan’s question in Parliament, acknowledging that a team of experts concluded a study on acid mine drainage and made a presentation to the inter-ministerial committee in October. The committee was asked to report back “comprehensively” and with recommendations.

The inter-ministerial committee was drawn from the Ministries of Mineral Resources, Science and Technology, National Planning and Water and Environmental Affairs.

Molewa said ministers had asked the team “to look at more options to resolve the matter as well as the cost implications of each”.

Morgan suggested that the mining companies, with the help of the government, bring in urgently needed technology to pump and treat the water.

He used the example of the technology used at eMalahleni water reclamation plant – created by Anglo Coal and BHP Billiton Energy Coal in Mpumalanga – where acid mine water was being desalinated and reclaimed.

He said the water was transformed into fine quality drinking water. - Donwald Pressly