The Department of Water Affairs has made “good progress” with regard to the challenge of acid mine drainage (AMD) in the Witwatersrand area since the inception of an inter-Ministerial committee on AMD in 2010, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa told Parliament on Tuesday.
In December, the department awarded JSE-listed construction company Group Five a R319-million contract for the construction of high-density treatment works, a pump station and monitoring shafts to tackle AMD in the Witwatersrand Central basin.
Molewa said the project was on schedule to start pumping water by November, which would result in the environmental critical level (ECL) not being breached.
Mining Weekly reported in February that the level of AMD was at 256 m and was expected to breach the ECL by September or October if pumping operations did not start.
Meanwhile, the Minister said the construction of a new water treatment plant in the Eastern basin would start by November 2014.
“In addition, the immediate solution in the Western basin, which involved the discharge of neutralised water into the water resource, was completed in June 2012, and the uncontrolled decant of AMD in the Western basin effectively halted in August last year,” she stated.
Further investigations into the feasibility of increasing the capacity of the “immediate solution”, as well as improving treatment through clarifiers or mobile desalination units, were under way.
Molewa added that the department was currently undertaking a second-phase upgrade of the Rand Uranium water treatment plant, in Randfontein, which would further increase the AMD treatment capacity in the Western basin.