'Black gold' may poison SA lakes

The future of one of South Africa's most extraordinary and pristine natural environments is in the balance.

The Chrissiesmeer district in Mpumalanga province has more than 300 lakes and pans that form an extensive ecosystem in which a large variety of plant and animal life - notably birds and frogs - thrive.

The trouble is, it sits partly inside one of the country's biggest coalfields. And with the coal price rising as a result of growing demand, from China and from South Africa's own energy needs, mining applications have taken off.

Geologists and ecologists fear that mining operations close to the lakes and pans could cause irreparable damage, particularly from the sulphuric acid that would get into the water systems and kill the vegetation and organisms on which the animal life exists.

The inhabitants also fear that the operations would deface the landscape and harm the area's tourist appeal.

Concerns about mining have led to the formation of local associations like the Escarpment Environment Protection Group (EEPG) and the Mpumalanga Lakes District Protection Group (MLDPG).

The processes allowing mining to take place have been subjected to legal proceedings. A case in the Pretoria High Court concerns a particular operation which affects a lake called Tevrede se Pan. But the outcome could have a bearing on the wider issue.

The proceedings have been instituted against Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwa Sonjica, the deputy-director of her department and a company, Black Gold Estates. The applicants are the MLDPG and two local land owners.

The case could also cast light on the broader issue of the mineral and energy department's attitude to the department of environmental affairs and tourism and its ecologically protective laws.

The Chrissiesmeer lakes and pans are listed as an Important Bird Area (IBA) under the international system to preserve bird habitats.

Marius Wheeler of the Avian Demography Unit of the University of Cape Town says among the criteria for its qualification are that it regularly has significant numbers of globally threatened species and that it is a regular home to congregatory water- and seabird species.

Moves are also afoot to get it listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.

Dr Gerhard Verdoorn, chief executive of BirdLife South Africa, says as a wetland and a grassland the area is of vital importance.

"Mining cannot but have a massive impact. What we cannot understand is why there cannot be closer co-operation between the departments involved to see that the region is properly protected," he says.

Birding, frog-counting and veld-flower excursions are on offer, but little has been done to develop the eco-tourism industry. There are no tourist route maps, bird hides or public access roads to the lakes and pans, most of which are on private land.

The biggest of the lakes is Chrissiesmeer, which is about 9km by 3km.

It was named Lake Chrissie in the 1880s after the daughter of the then president of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek, Andries Pretorius.

Adding to its tourist value is a rich history reaching back to the of time to San inhabitants, then to a people called the Tlou-tle, who are believed to have lived on the lakes about 1 500 years ago in floating villages they constructed mainly from reeds. The area's history also stretches back to the Anglo-Boer War, with a major battle in the town which is still re-enacted annually as a tourist event.

The area's ecological importance has been borne out in a study done by the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency in collaboration with the province's department of agriculture and land affairs.

The Mpumalanga Biodiversity Conservation Plan has classified most of the lakes district as "highly significant" and pockets of it as "irreplaceable".

Both categories specifically preclude mining. The latter goes as far as requiring that the land be incorporated into South Africa's formal protected-area system of nature reserves.

The category of "highly significant" areas requires that land be maintained in its natural state. It also recommends that any significant destruction of such areas' biodiversity should cause it to be elevated to the "irreplaceable" category, where it would come under formal protection.

Koos Pretorius, chairperson of the EEPG, says the mining threat is a combination of factors that has been aggravated by the sudden increased demand for coal.

Mineral-rights holders are governed by a "use it or lose it" law whereby they forfeit their rights to the state unless they exercise these within a set period.

Pretorius alleges that big mining companies are the major mineral-rights holders in the area and have opted to put their mineral rights which are of marginal value in trust for black economic empowerment purposes.

He alleges that some of the mining operators have not obtained the water licences required by the department of water affairs for such operations. There are even cases where mining has gone ahead even after applications have been turned down.

Professor Terrence McCarthy of the School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand is adamant that mining would be environmentally catastrophic.

"We should instead ring-fence the whole place and set strict conditions for its land and water use," he says.

As an expert on economic geology and environmental science, and a leading authority on the Okavango Delta, he says the area is of critical ecological value.

At an altitude of about 1 800m, it is among the highest plateaus of the Highveld region. It forms the headwater of the Vaal, Komati, uMpuluzi and the Usutu rivers.

The pans are clustered together and are unlike any others in the country.

"There is no other place like this in the country. Geomorphological uniqueness like this often goes hand in hand with biological uniqueness, which translates into high degrees of endemism. Its avian fauna has been fairly well studied, but not much else. We now have a team looking into all these many aspects," he says.

The danger of mining is largely seated in the geographical properties that give the lakes and pans their exceptional water quality.

Unmined, explains McCarthy, the rainwater soaks into the surface soil and weathered rock that is bedded on a sandstone layer. From there, it flows down to a "seepage zone" of spongy soil and vegetation that filters it slowly into the lake.

When mined, the sandstone bed is removed to get to the coal seam. Even if filled in afterwards to look like having been rehabilitated, the rainwater seeps through the surface soil into the back-filled pit whence, after the chemical reaction with the pyrite-bearing waste rock, it eventually "decants" into the lake in the form of water enriched in iron sulphate and sulphuric acid.

"Because the pans and lakes are closed, there is no flow-through and dilution. Loss of water is through evaporation, increasing the acidity. It is a relentless process. Eventually the pans will become pools of red water. They will turn into toxic pits. It will be a tragedy," says McCarthy.

Source : www.iol.co.za