Govt hunts mine dump owners
23/05/2007 11:25  - (SA)  

Harmony to shed ailing mines SA's gold mines of death Pirates nab billions in SA gold Standard sits on old Jhb mine

Johannesburg - The government is hunting down the owners of thousands of derelict mines to mitigate a bill of close to R100bn needed to rehabilitate the abandoned sites, the Business Report reported on Wednesday.

Elize Swart, the director of environmental policy at the department of minerals and energy, said the government was spending R80m a year on mine rehabilitation, in addition to R39m on dewatering forgotten mines.

If the government cannot find the owner of an unrehabilitated mine, then the state inherits the obligation to clean up that site. There is a database of 8 000 such mines.

"The legal status of these mines is being verified and mines are prioritised for rehabilitation," Swart said at an Institute of International Research conference on mine closure and rehabilitation.

At the present rate of progress it would take 800 years to rehabilitate all abandoned mines, she said.

Since 1975, the state had been rehabilitating former asbestos mines, but 32 years later only 70% of the rehabilitation had been completed.

She said South Africa had other priorities so international sponsorship would be needed to address the backlog.

A key shortfall in mining legislation was where mines were interconnected or had an integrated impact when they were closed.

An example was when DRDGold liquidated its Buffelsfontein mine in North West in March 2005, leaving a number of downstream mines under threat of being flooded if the pumping of underground water was halted.

Swart called for an overhaul of the mining laws to address this issue.