[miningmx.com] — ACID mine water under the central Witwatersrand Basin has been rising at an alarming rate as a result of the past two weeks’ heavy rains in the catchment area.
Before the rains started the toxic water was rising 31cm per day, but scientists monitoring the rate of its current rise said that for the past two weeks it had steadily increased to 47cm a day.
It would probably continue to rise before the ingress of rain water tapers off.
By February 2012, in less than 13 months, the critical environmental level of 150m will be reached under ERPM’s south-western vertical shaft (SWV-shaft) in Boksburg. This is less than 1km from the Cinderella shaft, an old ventilation shaft and the most likely point at which the acid water will emerge.
Despite this impending danger, at its annual lekgotla cabinet last week failed to consider the report by an inter-ministerial committee containing recommendations for warding off the impending environmental disaster.
Western Utilities Corporation (WUC), as far as is known the only company that has done a comprehensive proposal with proper costings for a project to pump the water to the surface and purify it, would need at least 14 months to execute the project.
Last month Trevor Manuel, minister of planning in the presidency who also serves on the interministerial committee, said that WUC’s proposal was one of many – and also the most expensive – on the table.
Harry Singleton, general manager for environmental services at E+PC, a division of the Aveng Group which built a pioneering plant at Emalahleni two years ago to purify acid water from coal mines and which supplies this as potable water to the town’s municipality, said his company had made submissions in this regard to government.
But these were preliminary proposals without costings, and at least 18 months would be needed to build such a plant, Singleton told Sake24 on Friday.
An environmental disaster in this area therefore seems inevitable because of government’s procrastination.
The government was monitoring the acid mine water issue, Sputnik Ratau, spokesperson for the minister of water affairs, said on Friday.
The acid mine water report would probably be considered at cabinet’s first weekly meeting of the year on Wednesday, but Ratau did not know what was on the agenda.
The discharge of 57 megalitres a day (57m litres) will begin shortly after the critical environmental level has been reached, when the water will for the first time reach dolomitic structures that extend to the surface, causing sinkholes.
– Sake24.com
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