Harmony upgrades Oberholzer sewerage works

The mining house Harmony Gold is helping the Merafong City Local Municipality by upgrading the Oberholzer sewerage plant.

This project in Merafong is one of three sewerage projects being undertaken by Harmony Gold.

The other two are in the Matjhabeng Municipality in the Welkom area and the Matlosana Municipality in the Klerksdorp area.

Harmony refurbished this sewerage works in Lang Street after the municipality did not have money for this. The work will result in improved water quality in the Wonderfonteinspruit and the Mooi River.

The total cost of refurbishing the three municipal waste water treatment plants amounts to R35.5m. These projects will collectively increase the sewage treatment capacity of the refurbished plants by around 30 million litres per day.

Harmony also implemented a group-wide programme to convert mine affected water to potable water to reduce dependency on existing groundwater and municipal supplies. As part of this, a 0.9ml per day Reverse Osmosis Treatment plant was built at Kusasalethu in 2017.

These on-site water treatment plants provide clean water to thousands of workers so they can shower, clean, drink and use ablution facilities. This has helped Harmony to reduce its reliance on municipalities and Rand Water to provide their mines with potable water and some of this water is also now available to surrounding communities.

The treatment of mine affected water to potable quality has also led to a massive improvement in the quality of water introduced to circuit, a definitive reduction in potable water intake, and an increase in the water recycling ratio at their operations.

“Access to secure water supply is critical to mining and the development of our people, our com-munities and our economy. Potable water is a very important resource for our employees, our op-erations and the communities where we work, especially in water-scarce jurisdictions,” says Har-mony Group CEO, Peter Steenkamp.