Appeal lodged on Mapungubwe mine

A coalition of civil society organisations will lodge an appeal against the granting of a water-use license to a company aiming to establish a colliery near the Mapungubwe National Park in northern Limpopo.

The coalition -- comprising the Mapungubwe Action Group, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, the Wilderness Foundation, BirdLife SA, the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists and the Peace Parks Foundation -- in a statement said it would lodge the appeal on Thursday.

This followed the granting of a water-use license by the department of water affairs to Limpopo Coal Company (Pty) Ltd on March 29 this year.

The license is for the company's proposed Vele colliery.

The national park, a proclaimed World Heritage Site, forms part of a proposed transfrontier conservation park between South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

It is also an area of significant cultural importance, incorporating the "lost city" of Mapungubwe Hill, an ancient 13th century African civilisation.

The coalition said the water-use licence granted to Limpopo Coal gave it the right, among other things, to abstract more than 2.4 billion litres of water a year from the Limpopo alluvial aquifer, based on an average of more than 6.7 million litres a day.

It said there were 17 grounds on which it was lodging the appeal. These included:

• that the department had based its decision about a water reserve estimate on "inaccurate" and dated information;
• that it had "ignored the precepts and recommendations of its own strategic documents", which contained strict warnings about the water-stressed nature of the catchment;
• that the proposed use of water by Limpopo Coal "would not be efficient of beneficial", or in the public interest;
• that there was "inadequate assessment" of the risks posed by acid mine drainage; and,
• that the department had not given "adequate consideration to the opinions of other authorities who had expressed grave concerns about the proposed colliery".