Pretoria - The Department of Mineral Resources yesterday assured the Portfolio Committee on Mining that government was working towards solutions to deal with problems posed by ownerless and derelict mines as well as acid mine drainage.
Mineral and Resources Director General Advocate Sandile Nogxina on Wednesday told the committee all relevant government departments were working together to ensure that viable and sustainable solutions were agreed upon.
"We are now working together to find sustainable solutions to the challenges posed by acid mine drainage. We will not allow the situation to get out of hand; it will not reach crisis proportions," he said.
Nogxina said in the past, departments had been working in silos with respect to the challenges posed by acid mine drainage and there was a lot of information residing in the various government departments, science institutions and universities that was not being coordinated.
"That is partly why we find that there are so many different approaches to the problems of acid mine drainage," he explained.
Acid mine water, or water contaminated with heavy metals as a result of mining activities, is said to be filling up basins under Johannesburg and threatening to surface.
The Director General said the scientific work that was being done was already at an advanced stage, emphasising that government's scientists had been working hard to find solutions over a long period already.
Government has established an Inter-Ministerial Committee, co-chaired by the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs and the Minister of Mineral Resources to look at the drainage problem. The Committee, which met two weeks ago, includes the Ministers of Energy, Finance, Planning and Science and Technology.
Officials from the Department of Mineral Resources and the Department of Water Affairs, as well as scientists from the Council for Geoscience, Mintek and CSIR and Water Research Commission, have been given six weeks by the Inter-Ministerial Committee to produce a coordinated plan to deal with the challenges posed by Acid Mine Drainage.
"Government and its scientific institutions have formed a technical committee and are working in tandem to produce a report which will table a coordinated plan to deal with Acid Mine Drainage at the next meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee," said Nogxina.
On the issue of ownerless and derelict mines, Nogxina presented to the Portfolio Committee a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate those mines which posed health and safety risks to communities.
"It is important to note that mining has been taking place in South Africa for more than a century and we are now having to deal with the legacy of this mining."
Following extensive research, the department now has a comprehensive database of ownerless and derelict mines, allowing for systematic management of the problem.
The department's short- to medium-term plan will focus on those ownerless and derelict mines which pose an immediate threat to communities. These include asbestos sites as well as open mines. A total of 48 asbestos mines in the Northern Cape and Limpopo have already been rehabilitated since 1994, whilst 108 dangerous gold mine trenches and shafts have been rehabilitated over the same period.
In the medium-to long-term, the department will be rolling out a plan to rehabilitate as many of the 6 000 ownerless and derelict mines as possible, depending on the availability of financial resources.
The estimated cost for the 10-year rehabilitation plan was R1.456 billion, excluding inflation, which the abandoned mine owners will be made liable for.
The department will also host a summit in the next two months to bring all relevant role-players together so that, collectively, ways to deal with the challenges posed by ownerless and derelict mines can be found.
