MechChem Africa May 2017

Water distress and our distracted response A t the time of writing, the Constitutional Court is hearing arguments about the ‘se- crecy’ of the vote of no confidence against Jacob Zuma; Brian Molefe has being reap- equivalent appointments or interventions been taken since to resolve SA’s water distress issues? Peter Middleton

The key focus for Liefferink at the FSE is the min- ing industry and its impacts on the environment, most notably,water pollutionandacidminedrainage(AMD). She points out early in her presentation that minewa- ter acidity as a phenomenon associatedwith pumping water from pits was already recognised back in 1903. And 20 years ago in 1987, the US Environmental ProtectionAgency recognised that “... problems related to mining waste may be rated as second only to global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion in terms of ecological risk.” Under the ‘polluter pays’ principle, the historical knowledge of the AMD problem should put the repa- ration responsibility back onto themining companies. But the nature of the problem is such that it manifests most dangerously after a mine has been shut down. Manyof theoriginalmineowners areno longer inbusi- ness and, while current owners are more responsible, most of the treatment costs are still beingborneby the public purse and water end-users. Quoting published reports by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry from 2003 and 2006, (DWAF), Liefferink says: “… mine void water exceeds the maximum allowable limits (Class II) of the SABS 241 DrinkingWater Standard, inmany cases by several orders of magnitude: pH, EC, TDS, SO 4 , Fe, Mg, Ca, Mn, Al, BP, Co and Ni” . Much of the water is also radioactive. It is currently acceptable to treat AMD by neu- tralisation or pHadjustment. In this process, dissolved metals precipitate out of solution in the formof highly toxic sludge, which is oftenbeing ‘contained’ inunlined pits, where future ingress risks remain. In addition, the pH-adjusted water contains sig- nificant percentages of dissolved salts, so the treated water requires dilution using purer and more expen- sive resources inorder tomake it safe. Hence the need to adopt more modern and more expensive reverse osmosis or ion exchange treatment technologies. The treatment costs, as quoted by the May 2016 Long Term Treatment of AMD document, estimated thecapex cost tobe in the regionofR10- toR12-billion, withongoingopexcostsofR25-millionpermonth,with at least 33% being borne by the public. South Africa is, undoubtedly, faced with multiple imperatives.Water,however,alreadyunderfundedand poorly prioritised, is being dangerously neglected due to the prevailing noise. q

pointed as Eskom, CEO; and, in spite of the brakes being applied to the nuclear procurement programme by the Western Cape High Court – because of a lack of due process – African Utility Week in Cape Town is expected to be dominated by the nuclear debate. These issues, along with radical economic trans- formation, the threat of a third downgrade to ‘junk status’ byMoody’s and thedivisivenatureof theANC’s presidential succession campaigns, are so dominant that the importance of environmental issues are being downgraded to ‘trivial’. At SAIChE’sGauteng dinner late lastmonth, a stal- wart in the environmental space, Mariette Liefferink, presented an overview of the state of South Africa’s water, with particular emphasis on the effects of min- ing. Liefferink’s legal background and the litigation ex- perienceof theorganisationshe leads – theFederation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE) –were evident in themeticulous referencingandcredits associatedwith every fact she presented. These are sobering, if not chilling and MechChem Africa’s summaryof her talk is a ‘must read’ in this issue. Froma water availability perspective, 12 of South Africa’s 19 Water Management Areas (WMAs) require intervention, based on a detailed map pre- sented courtesy of Fred van Zyl, chief engineer for macro planning for the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS). An online report of a briefing to Ministers by the DWS on its Infrastructure Master Plan, dated 3 June 2015, reports that ‘… the total estimated replacement cost (of water infrastructure) was R1.18-billion, and the estimated investment requirement over ten years was R805-billion, or R81-billion per annum. The total funding available was R46-billion per annum, meaning there was a funding deficit of R35-billion per annum’ [ref: pmg.org. za/committee-meeting/21011/]. A little further down in the summary, we read: ‘… DWS was dealing with a backlog of over 100 years in the making, and to eradicate it in 21 years was impossible, with the changing urban landscape, the mushrooming of informal settlements and the increase in urbanmigration’ . This report predates the first appointment of Brian Molefe as the permanent CEO of Eskom (Sep 25, 2015) to ‘sort out’ our load shedding issues. Have any

MechChem Africa is endorsed by:

2 ¦ MechChem Africa • May 2017