CHANTAL Whiller and her husband did their homework before they moved their family to an upmarket country estate at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.Whiller’s husband, who worked on the mines in Welkom, had heard about the toxic and potentially radioactive acid mine drainage (AMD) seeping into the Cradle from the Witwatersrand’s abandoned goldfields.“He […]
A toxic delay
Just as the Tweelopiespruit took its dying breaths, Garfield Krige scooped up the contaminated stream’s last surviving fish and took them home with him to his fish pond in the nearby Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site. “I don’t think they’re unique in any way,” explains Krige, a hydrologist, of the hardy tilapia population that […]
FSE reports on AMD
On 19 May, the Federation for a Sustainable Environment submitted a report to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Water and the Environment, on invitation. The subject, the current status of AMD.
To decant, or not to decant? That is the question
Concerns that Johannesburg and the Cradle of Humankind will soon be flooded with acid mine drainage (AMD) have been central to discussions on polluted mine water for months, with the public being worked up into a frenzy about the CBD sinking and South Africa’s heritage being wiped out. While a media storm has been created […]