Johannesburg - By October 2012 the rising level of acidic water from old gold mines will begin to infiltrate and pollute the Johannesburg water table, as is already happening in the West Rand.
A planned project to ward off the threatening ecological disaster by purifying the water is awaiting approval from the regulatory authorities.
The first deadline - that for the finalisation and submission of the environmental impact study that was begun two years ago - is the end of October if the project is to be completed in time, said Jaco Schoeman, chief executive of Western Utilities Corporation (WUC), a partnership between the remaining gold mines on the Witwatersrand, on Wednesday.
The project needs to be approved by the end of this year to enable R1.5bn in project finance to be put together by next year for pumping water from the Eastern and the Western Rand to the current Central Rand shafts of ERPM, from whence it can be purified in the new plant and pumped to the RandWater distribution system.
Gold mining activities in the threatened Witwatersrand basin are all on their last legs, but the gold companies have contributed R500m towards the infrastructure of the ingenious project.
These companies include Pamodzi Gold, which is under provisional liquidation, DRDGold, First Uranium, Mintails, Mogale Gold and West Wits Mining.
"Government demanded a solution from the mining industry and this is the industry's proposal,?"Schoeman told a news conference in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
The dying Witwatersrand gold industry comprises three geological formations: the West Rand, the Central Rand and the East Rand basins. The Black Reef Incline, which is the Krugersdorp-Randfontein portion of the West Rand Basin, has been polluting groundwater since 2002 and causing enormous ecological damage to the Krugersdorp Game Reserve, the Sterkfontein Caves, the Cradle Of Mankind conservation area, and many consumers of water such as farmers downstream.
"This type of pollution can totally destroy an ecosystem."
The acid water in the Black Reef Incline decants 15.7m litres of its pollutant into the natural water table every day. The Far West Rand Basin will dump 75m to 125m litres a day when the rising toxic effluent reaches the water table by 2012.
When mine void from the Central and West Rand is added, the acid water pollution level will rise to 155m a day.
- Sake24.com
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