The Department of Water and Sanitation’s existing treatment programme involving pumping acid mine drainage out of the Witwatersrand basin and then partially treating the water by neutralising it will not assist in alleviating the challenge in the long term, says the Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE) CEO Mariette Liefferink.
Liefferink says government is only looking at the flooding of the basins, which is a reactionary approach to the problem instead of addressing the root causes of AMD, namely the tailings dams, openpits, receptor dams, polluted wetlands and streams and waste-rock dumps.
