The original mill at Sibanye Gold’s Cooke Operations, in Randfontein, goes back to 1888 when, according to surface manager Andre du Plessis, it hosted the biggest stamp mill battery in the world to create 40-million tonnes of coarse sand and fine slime. That dumped mine waste is currently being mined hydraulically, using poor-quality water pumped from 6 km away. The slurry created is screened before being pumped 3 km to the Cooke plant, where 400 t of the material is processed every month to recover the gold that it contains. As part of the rehabilitation procedure, 150 t of lime is added to every hectare of soil to reduce its acidity in what was originally a wetland. Sibanye is planning to mine a million tonnes of mine waste a month at its proposed West Rand Tailings Retreatment Project.