The Department of mining might not be the only government body that does not have a plan to ensure clean drinking water to all South Africans. The attitude of the department of mining is possibly the truth but is would be due to negligence and short sightedness.
Acid mine drainage is a global phenomena and is in not way unique to the Johannesburg area. Both department,mining and water affairs have been aware of the potential issues for many years but have chosen to do as little as possible about the situation,just enough to keep it away from public attention.
This is a public water crisis.
The following extract form the Sowentan
THE Department of Mining has no plan to stop acid mine water in the country’s 5901 abandoned mines from causing a national disaster.
Director-general Sandile Nogxina told Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) yesterday:“We don’t have a long-term plan on how we are going to do that. The plan we have covers this financial year.”
Nogxina came in for a bashing from all political parties,who accused him of ignoring the “crisis”.
ANC MP Roy Ainslie said:“You do not appreciate the extent of the environmental crisis we face with regard to these abandoned mines. If you have rehabilitated only five mines over the past three years,that is 1,5 mines a year. At this rate,it would take about 3000 years to rehabilitate all these mines.”
Scopa chairperson Themba Godi said if the mines were not rehabilitated,everything else the government did would be “pointless”.
“Building RDP houses,building hospitals and schools for communities will be wasted expenditure if those areas are going to become difficult to live in. It is a life and death problem,”Godi said.
The water in abandoned mines is said to be rising every day. The water mixes with the minerals and rock that have been exposed by mining and pollutes the water table. As more rain falls,the acid water overflows on to the streets.
Sowetan reported in July that the acid mine drainage problem in Johannesburg was so huge that the city would have to spend R220million on new pump stations. These will pump the acid mine water away and prevent it from flooding the city.
Democratic Alliance MP Mark Steele demanded that Nogxina be held accountable for not coming up with a plan.
