Bethal farmers attend meeting about new Sasol mine

Residents had the chance to raise their concerns about another mine that is in the planning process to be constructed between farms in the areas of Bethal and Kriel.

The mining activities will be 12km northwest of Bethal and directly to the south and southeast of Kriel.

Sasol Mining already did many of the required studies to go ahead and open another mine, or they are in the process of doing these studies, including the integrated regulatory process for environmental authorisation, a waste management licence and an integrated water use licence for the proposed Alexander Mining Project.

The environmental assessment practitioner Sasol appointed, Jones & Wagener (Pty) Ltd engineering and environmental consultants, and hosted a meeting in Bethal on Thursday, September, 8 to hear concerns and answer questions from residents and farmers.

Sasol obtained the mining right from Anglo American Inyosi Coal in April 2018.Sasol called this the Alexander Mining Project.

Marius Kruger of Sasol Mining said the coal reserves of this project are required to replace coal currently purchased from the Isibonelo Colliery which will near its end in June 2025.

“That is where the Alexander Project and Isibonelo Colliery will come together,” said Kruger.

“A combination of Sasol Mining operations is scheduled to supply coal to Sasol operations.”

The proposed Alexander Mining Project is a “greenfields” project that will include opencast mining operations between farms.
Sasol Mining indicated that they may decide to mine additional areas of the remaining reserves at Alexander in the future.

If they do, it will be underground mining.

This, however, is not currently in the project plan and has not been assessed as part of the current study.

A new environmental application and the licensing process would be required for additional mining, should Sasol Mining decide to mine these areas in the future.

Developments that will see the light if Sasol Mining goes ahead with its Alexander Mining Project include a mine complex, including offices, parking, change houses, workshops, substations, haul roads, Run of Mine tip, temporary coal stockpile, a pollution control dam, canals, contaminated and topsoil stockpiles and a sewage treatment plant, an overland conveyor, access roads, powerlines and portable and dirty water pipelines.

Access to the mine will be obtained from the provincial road R545 and from Secunda or Trichardt’s side, it will be obtained from the gravel district roads, D618 and D450.

The opencast mining activities are planned to begin in 2023 and be completed by 2036.

Some of the questions farmers asked were where the people working at the mine are going to live, what would be the working hours and if they are also going to mine on Sundays.

“How can we obey the laws of the country, which is the right thing to do, but then disregard the law of the Creator of the whole universe,” said one of the farmers.

“We, as farmers, respect the Lord and each other, our production machinery is silent on Sundays.”

Residents and farmers still have time until Friday, September 23 to raise their concerns and ask questions via https://www.jaws.co.za/publicdocument/alexanderconsultation-scoping-report/.

One of the farmers, Vlam Venter, who had been fighting a battle since 2015 with a different mining project, driven by Canyon Coal, said he followed the right procedures to appeal that project, but he has not yet received any feedback. It must be noted that the Canyon Coal  project is unrelated to Sasol and the Alexander Mining Project.

Those interested in receiving further information about the Sasol Alexander Mining Project, should register as an interested and affected party by contacting Jones & Wagener at the details provided by the above link.