The residents of Gauteng are safe regarding acid mine water.
This was the message of Nandi Mayathula-Khoza, Gauteng province’s MEC for Agriculture, Social and Rural Development who launched the five-year plan for the management of acid mine water for Gauteng Province at a media briefing in Krugersdorp last Wednesday.
Mayathula-Khoza assured residents acid mine water was monitored daily.
She said the problem with acid mine water started 120 years ago with the beginning of gold mining on the Witwatersrand, of which Springs is part of the eastern basin.
The other two basins are the western basin in Krugersdorp and the central basin in Johannesburg.
The government regarded the western basin as the highest priority, as there has been a free flow of acid mine drainage (AMD) into water streams since 2002.
An AMD purifying plant was erected at Gold One Mogale to deal with the problematic water.
Mayathula-Khoza said the government could not run after the mine houses that caused this legacy of AMD, but was making sure current mine houses adhered to the new laws and standards of rehabilitating mines.
One of these measures is that the mines have to purify the water before putting it back into natural water streams, like the one at Mogale Gold One guests and delegates visited after the MEC’s launch.
Mayathula-Khoza decribed AMD as the outflow of acidic water from usually abandoned gold mines.
“Acid rock drainage occurs naturally, but is exacerbated by large-scale earth disturbances characteristic of mining and other large construction activities.”
Acid mine seepage also occurs from gold mine dumps when the water table is raised and polluted by water running off and leaching from the dumps.
She said the AMD in different areas of Gauteng is a cause for concern, especially when a mine has been abandoned and the pumping of mine water stopped.
“As the water level rises, the AMD starts to pollute dolomitic compartments, it eventually flows into streams.”
The pollution it causes in the streams is in the form of a hardened sludge called “yellow boy”, which contains a high level of iron and some toxic materials.
About the five-year plan on AMD, Mayathula-Khoza said this was for the long-term management of acid mine water and did not include initiatives on active treatment, neutralisation and ingress control of acid mine water.
The MEC could not say how much the management of AMD would cost, as the five-year plan was a holistic broad framework plan for further research which will be fine-tuned as more information and data comes to light.
On a question of why it took so long for government to do something about this acid water, she said the government had to get a plan into place.
Mayathula-Khoza added if nothing was done, it was possible that acid water would reach the surface at the lowest points in the central basin by next year and during 2016 in the eastern basin.
After the MEC’s speech, Gauteng officials explained to the Advertiser that the lowest point closest to Springs would be at the Elandsfontein Spruit, close to Furcrum.
