Dean Pelser at the Eastern Limb water project which will provide Mogalakwena with an additional 14 million litres a day until 2018.Working with key stakeholders for more than a decade, our platinum business has been at the forefront of the Eastern Limb water project, which will provide almost two million people in South Africa’s Limpopo province with a clean, safe and reliable water supply for the first time. The scarcity of this natural resource is one of the mining industry’s greatest risks and threatens the development and sustainability of our operations in this area.
“People laughed at us when we said that water would become more important to the mining industry than minerals,” says Eastern Limb Development general programme manager Dean Pelser, (pictured) explaining that the region has an annual rainfall of around 460 mm and an evaporation rate of 1,200 mm a year. “The extreme water shortage could only be tackled with the critical mass of the entire industry and it became apparent that we needed a regional solution that would not only benefit our own operations, but also the community.”
Anglo American’s platinum business took the lead in the Eastern Limb water project by establishing a joint water forum with 21 mining houses. The forum collaborated with various levels of government and other key stakeholders to find a long term strategy that would address the economic, social and environmental issues related to bulk water delivery in the region.
It also played a pivotal role in the South African government’s Olifants River Water Resources Development Project, which includes the raising of the Flag Boshilo dam wall, a project that has successfully been completed, and the construction of the De Hoop dam at a cost of R16 billion ($2.2 billion). Construction on the dam will finish by 2013, meeting the water needs of several of our operations, including Mogalakwena mine.
The construction of 600 kilometres of water supply pipeline will take place in a phased approach until 2020 and will involve the establishment of pump stations, purification works and water reticulation infrastructure. Much of this will outlive many of our mining operations, creating lasting benefits for local stakeholders.
Fifty per cent of all the water delivered is designated for domestic use, and the community that stands to benefit most is situated in the Sekhukhuneland district where 1.4 million people will have a ready supply of clean water on their doorsteps. The remaining communities are situated along the pipeline route and the venture is expected to open up several corporate social investment opportunities in this impoverished area.
“These people typically harvest water on the roofs of their homes or have access to boreholes with primitive hand pumps. For many, a near-two kilometre walk pushing a 20-litre barrel in a wheelbarrow is part of their daily lives,” says Dean.
Optimising our water resources
As the largest open pit platinum operation in the world, Mogalakwena currently requires 22 million litres of water per day to sustain its activities. Most of this is utilised in its plant, which processes more than one million tonnes of ore every month. To ensure that we do not put people’s access to water – a human right – under threat, 20 million litres of the water we use is ‘grey water’ processed from sewage works, while two million litres come from the mine’s well field and is used for domestic consumption.
While this is enough to cater for the operation’s existing needs, the Eastern Limb water project will provide Mogalakwena with an additional 14 million litres a day until 2018, to cater for its future expansion and enable it to unlock the vast mineral wealth held in the area.
Mogalakwena has committed to recycling and re-using water with zero discharge to the environment, and continuously strives to improve its water-use efficiency and conservation. Surface water is monitored from the pipeline to the point where waste products are deposited into tailings dams, while groundwater is monitored both across the site and within neighbouring communities to assess potential impacts.
The mine recently appointed consultants to develop a stormwater management plan which – together with its newly completed water- balance model – is expected to improve the management of water across the operation.
In the meantime, Mogalakwena is reducing its water use by surfacing a further two kilometres of haul road with an environmentally friendly dust suppressant, increasing the total network the product covers to 27.4 kilometres. In 2011, the business aims to improve the water-use efficiency of its south concentrator by increasing the density of tailings deposited into the dam, thus reducing evaporation losses.