'Show us acid mine report'

Environmentalists and academics say the magnitude, complexity and costs involved in the treatment of acid mine drainage (AMD) may be the reason why the government is being tardy in disclosing the findings of the report it commissioned last year.

"The magnitude and complexity stems from 120 years of unregulated gold mining and to treat the AMD water to potable quality using reverse osmosis will be R11 per cubic metre," said Mariette Liefferink, the chief executive at the Federation for a Sustainable Environment.

"Rand Water sells its water at between R3 and R4 per cubic metre and government, particularly the apartheid government, has been the principal polluter."

Scientist Dr Anthony Turton agrees. "It is all about the end of a golden age of wealth extraction that gave little thought to a post-mining future and no repatriation or reinvestment of that wealth for the day that the gold ran out. The party is over. Now comes the hangover."

Dina Townsend, a staff attorney at the Centre for Environmental Rights, said a coalition of NGOs was considering legal remedies to prevent and mitigate the discharge of millions of litres of polluted acid mine water into water courses.

"The failure to publish the report increases public suspicion about the scope and urgency of the problem, and we have called on the inter-ministerial committee to release the report to the public without further delay," Townsend said.

In September last year the government assembled a team of 27 experts to work out a response to the problem.

The team had six weeks to work on a report that was presented to an inter-ministerial committee.

Liefferink said it was concerning that the Minister of Mineral Resources, Susan Shabangu, was authorising prospecting and mining rights without ensuring that there were sufficient rehabilitation funds available to deal with residual and latent impacts such as AMD.

"It should not be passed over that the mineral resources minister has the right, in terms of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, to liquidate, even before mine closure, the rehabilitation funds, in order to address environmental emergencies," she said.

"It is perplexing that the minister has not liquidated these trust funds for pumping and treatment of AMD."

Turton said the country's options are limited.

"If one expands outwards from AMD as a single issue, and takes a broader strategic look at the whole thing, then the future viability of Johannesburg as a city, and Gauteng as a province, is at stake," he said.

"Then there is the complex issue of open holes between the surface and the mine void. A recent report by Department of Mineral Resources to parliament notes the existence of 900 holes of this nature, 244 of which are in central Johannesburg. Some of these holes are 1000m deep. These holes exist because of unemployment resulting in the theft of metal from these abandoned shafts. Zama Zamas (illegal miners) also use these illegal openings.

"AMD is thus a small part of a very much bigger problem, that collectively raises the question about the very sustainability of Johannesburg as a safe city in which to invest."

Justin Truter, a director at Werksmans Attorneys, said: "I am of the view that disclosure of the report is manifestly in the public interest and in the interest of the environment; that its disclosure will reveal a serious, and perhaps imminent, public safety and/or environmental risk, and that its disclosure outweighs any grounds of exclusion under the Promotion of Access to Information Act on which the state may seek to rely."

He said the Constitution recognises the right to an environment that is not harmful to health or wellbeing and to have the environment protected for present and future generations.

He said the information act provides for mandatory disclosure where such a disclosure will reveal a substantial contravention of, or failure to comply with, the law, or an imminent and serious public safety or environmental risk and the public interest in the disclosure of the record clearly outweighs the harm contemplated in the ground of exclusion.

Marius Diemont, a partner specialising in environmental law at Webber Wentzel, said the lack of transparency and consultation in the process was worrying. Not even the communities most affected have been consulted.

Diemont said: "The failure of the inter-ministerial committee to make available the reports means that there can be no open debate. It is imperative that the public be informed what the findings of the report are."

Attempts to get comment from the government on the subject this week were unsuccessful.