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SA federation to fight polluters Posted: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 [miningmx.com] -- ENVIRONMENTALISTS have set up a federation intended to take legal action against mining companies and South Africa’s government with regard to a number of areas they claim have been badly damaged by pollution. “It’s for us to establish legal precedence and hold mining companies responsible,” says environmental activist Mariette Liefferink, adding that high-profile lawyer George Bizos is part of the federation’s steering committee. “He was appointed to help us establish a legal precedence at Wonderfonteinspruit and Chrissiesmeer, in Mpumalanga,” she says. Under South African law directors can be held personally responsible for environmental damage. “These principles haven’t been applied – and that’s the reason for the establishment of the federation,” Liefferink says. “The time has come to hold the mining industry responsible for the environmental damage they’ve caused – as well as Government for failing its mandate to protect the environment.” The federation is made up of a range of players who want to ensure environmental integrity and sustainable development. At Wonderfonteinspruit mining companies say they’re doing all they can to measure and then rectify the damage done in more than a century of gold extraction. The Wonderfonteinspruit lies on the West and Far West Rand, the richest gold deposit mined for about 120 years, creating massive problems with aquifers, uranium pollution, tailings dumps, dust and water contamination. The spruit (Afrikaans for a watercourse) runs from the western edge of Johannesburg near Krugersdorp, down through the actively mined Carletonville area and on to Potchefstroom, south-west of Johannesburg. It’s been the subject of five studies since 1999. The most recent was by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) and its results in the Wonderfonteinspruit catchment area (WCA) are hardly encouraging. “It became apparent that the historical and present mining-related discharges of naturally occurring radioactive material into the WCA has given rise to radioactive contamination of water bodies, sediments and soils in the WCA,” the NNR report said. The report highlighted the potential for dangerous minerals locked in sediment to be stirred up by cattle drinking from/children playing in the waterways and that those minerals could enter the food chain. In 1991 it was estimated 12 tonnes/year of uranium entered the WCA in water discharged from mines. An estimated 24 tonnes of dissolved uranium is released into the environment from unlined tailings dumps alone. A further 10 tonnes of particle-bound uranium is thought to be blown off dumps and washed into the waterways by rainfall. There are more than 100,000 tonnes of uranium on dumps in the area. Gold Fields led the establishment of a multi-stakeholder group – the Wonderfonteinspruit Action Group (WAG) – to address the matter. WAG has been incorporated into the catchment management forum, which monitors discharges into the waterway, says Willie Jacobsz, who heads sustainable development at Gold Fields. Gold Fields began a multi-million rand, six-month sediment sampling programme – now part of the forum – when the condition of the WCA flared into public debate more than a year ago in order to understand the scale of the problem and to plan to rectify it. “Once you know what’s there and how much is there you can determine where needs to be cleaned up and how much it will cost,” Jacobsz says. It would appear from initial indications that the heavy metals and radiological contamination are limited mainly to dams. Asked why gold companies appeared to be only taking action now, Jacobsz says: “As we’ve become aware of the problem and understanding it – as the academic community started understanding it – our activity and action in that regard grew. We operated within the regulations laid out in nuclear licences. As our understanding has grown we’ve seen that maybe some of those parameters prescribed by the State may have been inadequate.” Click Here to subscribe to our daily newsletter
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