Farmers and minister in life and death water battle

Several farming organisations have been launched in Mpumalanga to prevent the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Buyelwa Sonjica, from approving over 200 mining applications, which could spell the end of agriculture.
The organisations, which are based in Ermelo, Delmas, Belfast, Carolina and Standerton, want to prevent the Vaal River, the economic lifeline of Gauteng which has its origin in Mpumalanga, from being polluted by acidic mine water.
Helgaard Rautenbach, chairperson of the Standerton Agricultural Forum, said it’s a matter of life and death for farmers. Koos Pretorius of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment and Prof Terence McCarthy, a geology professor at Wits, pleaded with Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga to pressurise the government to turn the applications down.
Pretorius said Eskom could play a major role in halting the licenses. “If Eskom declines to buy coal from these traditional farming areas, there would be no market and no need to open these mines.” He added that water from the Witbank and Middleburg dams is already polluted to such an extent it can’t be used for irrigation.
Several famers in Mpumalanga have been warned by the European Union (EuroGap) that their irrigation water’s quality is unacceptable.
Democratic Alliance councillor for Secunda, James Harris, said agricultural production in the area had decreased by 60% in the last year, adding that the biggest problem with the coal mining in Mpumalanga is that it would take place in the catchments areas of the Usuthu, Komati, Vaal and Olifants rivers. Pretorius said once the coal reserves had been fully exploited and mining had ceased, the mines would be flooded and leak acidic water.
“In the upper reaches, the rivers will run red and both the river and groundwater would be undrinkable, and kill all aquatic life,” he said. “The rivers will be choked with sediment and extensive areas of the region will become devoid of vegetation due to acidification of the soil, setting in motion severe erosion which will strip the soil cover to eat into the backfill of the old opencast workings.
“In short, the region could become a total wasteland.” Pretorius added coal mining also poses a long-term threat to the Vaal River basin, which provides drinking water to a third of the country’s population.
He said in the absence of adequate environmental protection procedures, a moratorium should be placed on new mining applications in all of these catchment areas until the cumulative impact of mining is fully understood and adequate mitigation can be guaranteed.
“A research project should be launched to assess the future impact of current and past mines and to find ways of reducing acidic discharge and passively treating sulphate-rich mine water,” Pretorius said.
“If sufficient low-cost mitigation procedures can’t be found, no further mining should be permitted in these sensitive catchments,” he concluded. – Peter Mashala