Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionruns into the Olifants River, past fruit farmers and into the Loskop Dam. Over thepast three years, officials at the Loskop Dam nature reserve have reported thousands offish deaths as well as the deaths of crocodiles and water turtles.The AMD degradation seems to have encouraged other factories – Highveld Steel,Vanchem, Samancor – to release their untreated waste water into these streams. TheEmalahleni municipality similarly releases raw sewage into local streams and this tooarrives in the Brugspruit. The stream is surrounded by townships in a busy valley.Children play in it, people cross it on their way to work, herders graze cattle and coalpickers work over heaps of discard coal.Four mines in the Witbank area, belonging to AngloCoal and BHP Billiton, haveconstructed an acid mine water treatment plant. They show that AMD water can betreated but the price tag of R300 million seems to have put off the hundreds of othercoal mines. The externalised cost from untreated AMD is far greater. It is imposed onthe environment and the people living there. Finally, the costs from abandoned minesare imposed on the public purse – except, of course, that the DWAF itself appears tohave abandoned the responsibility.Laying waste to waterIn more than a century of mining, South African gold mines have covered anestimated 180 square kilometres under more than 200 tailings dams. These areas arenow permanently contaminated. In 2001, Roesner et al estimated that treating just thepolluted topsoil (top 30 cm) would cost US$550 million [2001].Mining waste is classified into rock and sand heaps and slimes dams. Slimes damscontain the silt and slurry together with the chemicals – arsenic, cyanide or mercury– used to extract gold from ore. The gold ore itself typically contains uranium andsignificant concentrations of chromium, copper, nickel, lead and zinc. The combinationof acid mine drainage, high in sulphate salts, and heavy metals has impacted severelyon the Vaal river system.On the Far West Rand, gold miners physically destroyed a high quality dolomiticaquifer and also contaminated it beyond recovery by dumping radio-active miningwaste into it. The ore contains high concentrations of gold making the Far West Randthe richest of all seven active goldfields of the Witwatersrand basin. It also containsWasting the Nation - groundWork - 91 -