Following the submission made by Mariette Liefferink on behalf of Civil Society Organisations (3 December 2009) the Government Task Team, the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) has issued a response through the Chairman of the Government Task Team on Mine Closure and Water Management.
An extract from the response is quoted here:
"The Government Task Team (GTT) appreciates the scale of the problem on the surface and underground water quality in Gauteng (Witwatersrand area). As a result, the Government Departments represented on the GTT have made strides in finding solutions and management measures to the problem of AMD.
"In an attempt to strategically resolve the cumulative and integrated impacts of mine water in the Wits Basins, the Department of Mineral Resources initiated research under the umbrella of the Witwatersrand Water Ingress Project and the Council for Geoscience was contracted to undertake this research on behalf of the Department. The focus of the research is the existing and potential problems relates to mine water management and acid mine drainage in the Witwatersrand. Remedial actions and strategies have been proposed.
"Of great importance, is the research which leads to the development and implementation of the regional mine closure strategy aimed to address mine water challenges in the medium to long term. These studies will amongst others indicate remedial measures. Remedial measures to precent ingress and manage decant, have been identified and implementation of some of the measures has strarted, with the construction of a canal to provent ingress into the Central Basin at Florida Lake, as well as the establishment of monitoring systems: geochemical modelling as well as further reasearch aimed at final strategic solutions.
"The GTT has scrutinised the condition of every basin and have identified status, current activities, available infrastructure and key challenges. Hence the GTT is in the process of developing an action plans to deal with AMD issues in the relevant basins. In parallel to these, other relevant departments are dealing with related challenges.
"The GTT believes that in order to tackle the problem, a coordinated approach is required, amongst all stakeholders. We therefore have welcomes your inputs in this regards. "
