MINES Minister Gwede Mantashe is expected at Samancor Chrome’s Dikwena operation near Brits on Monday after a tailings storage facility failure last week sent sludge spilling into neighbouring Eland Mine.
The department’s visit comes after the incident at Dam 1B of Dikwena’s tailings storage facility on Thursday 13 August.
Eland mine, including its Maroelabult section, is owned by Northam Platinum.
Samancor’s Dikwena Chrome confirmed the incident at the weekend and said no injuries had been recorded.
It said the facility was operated by contractor One Chrome and used by One Chrome’s Inyoni Platinum PGM recovery plant.
“The incident is under investigation, and we are cooperating fully with the relevant authorities,” Dikwena Chrome said.
Clean-up and repair work had begun, while further measures would be implemented once the investigation was completed, the company added.
Northam Platinum said the spill had not materially affected operations at Eland mine, although some of the sludge flowed onto its property.
Northam investor relations manager Hurbey Geldenhuys told MiningMX the company had initially stopped employees from going underground at Maroelabult as a precaution following the incident, but operations had since resumed as normal.
Maroelabult is one of the shafts at Eland mine.
Sludge had blocked a road used by employees between the shaft and the area where their vehicles were parked, he said, temporarily preventing them from accessing their vehicles.
The material had since been cleared from the road.
Geldenhuys added it was too early to estimate the cost of the clean-up and repairs.
The spill damaged a railway line and Eskom power lines, while muddy material also entered a nearby river.
The Department of Water and Sanitation and the Limpopo-Olifants Catchment Management Agency have launched an investigation into the incident, the Sowetan reported.
The DWS has reportedly issued a verbal directive to Dikwena Chrome to stop depositing tailings into any of its tailings facilities while the investigation is ongoing.
Water samples have been collected and authorities are awaiting the results to determine the extent of the pollution, according to the newspaper.
Regulation of tailings facilities
The incident puts renewed focus on the management and regulation of tailings storage facilities in South Africa following the catastrophic Jagersfontein failure in the Free State in September 2022.
The dam collapse occurred on the premises of the Jagersfontein diamond mine, situated about 100 kilometres from Bloemfontein in South Africa’s Free State province.
The Jagersfontein collapse caused extensive damage to property and infrastructure.
The disaster also exposed uncertainty over the regulation of tailings facilities. Parliament was told after the Jagersfontein incident that the then Department of Mineral Resources and Energy did not have jurisdiction over that facility under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act.
