The Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency has received 1 775 mining and prospecting applications since 2005, raising concerns about acid mine drainage in South Africa’s primary water catchment system.
|||The Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) has received 1 775 mining and prospecting applications since 2005, raising concerns about acid mine drainage in South Africa’s primary water catchment systems.
The prospecting applications represent 40.3 percent of Mpumalanga’s surface area, and mining applications 13.7 percent. It is unclear what proportion have been granted.
The mining firms were seeking primarily coal, but applications were also lodged for tin, vanadium, cobalt, torbanite and platinum group metals.
The Department of Mineral Resources is obliged to pass on applications for prospecting and mining rights in Mpumalanga to the MTPA, which is a commenting authority.
Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu implemented a moratorium on the receipt of new prospecting applications in September. It expires at month-end in all provinces except Mpumalanga, where it will run for another two to three months.
Shabangu said she granted the extension because much work needed to be done in Mpumalanga, particularly addressing cases in which rights were granted over areas that were environmentally sensitive.
Well-placed sources said the Mpumalanga applications lodged since 2005 had been made in 39 percent of the province’s high water-yielding sub-catchments, which produce half its water yield. If allowed to proceed, the mining and prospecting activity would have massive pollution implications for water catchment systems, including the Vaal, Tugela, Usuthu and Pongola.
Concern is also mounting about a resurgence of interest in old gold mines around Pilgrim’s Rest. The sources said the applications had been made in 25 percent of the province’s designated protected areas, half of all irreplaceable sites (where no other options are available to meet conservation targets), 65 percent of highly significant areas (where limited options are available for targets), and 63 percent of threatened ecosystems.
Since the start of the moratorium on new prospecting applications in September, the MTPA had received 81 prospecting applications.
Department spokeswoman Zingaphi Jakuja said yesterday the moratorium applied to the receipt of new prospecting applications only. In the meantime, those in the system were being processed.
Angus Burns, the co-ordinator of the WWF Enkangala Grassland Project, which aims to protect 1.6 million hectares of critical habitat that contains the source of four major South African river systems, said the department should clarify what a moratorium meant.
“Is it continuous processing in the background, and the minute it ends, they will issue licences? This seems like business as usual.”
He questioned why mining rights were still being issued if environmental concerns were the primary reason for extending the moratorium on prospecting applications in Mpumalanga.
He also queried why the extension of the moratorium on environmental grounds was restricted to Mpumalanga. He pointed out the headwaters of the Pongola River system crossed from Mpumalanga into northern KwaZulu-Natal, an area affected by a number of prospecting rights.
Jakuja said environmental considerations were not the only reason informing the extension of the moratorium in Mpumalanga. Other reasons included the need to “finalise outstanding overlaps where rights were granted
“. - Business Report
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/mines-threaten-water-catchment-areas-1.1029384
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