BCL Mine Repossesses Irrigation Farm

By Onalenna Modikwa
Staff Writer | Monday December 3, 2007 00:00

The mine had an agreement with the winning bidder for the off-take of six mega litres of wastewater a day for use at the 210 hectare irrigation farm. This was mainly intended to stop the discharge of mine waste-water into the Motloutse River.

Addressing a full council meeting last Thursday the mine general manager, Montwedi Mphathi said the mine has since taken back ownership of the farm because it was not meeting its intended objectives. He noted that the mine is now considering new strategies for the project.

The mine on Friday held a consultation workshop with stakeholders on how to best utilise the significant amount of mine wastewater available. He said that mine now intends to use the farm for skills training so that the asset can contribute to the economy of the town.

Councillors urged the mine to consider extending the farm use to the youth so that they can make use of it alongside the investments already engaged for agricultural activities. The farm is on the BCL mine lease area but has the approval from Ngwato Land Board for farming.

Mphathi said the mine investigated different water treatment processes and they all required high capital and operating costs. The use of wetland was considered on the basis that it is a robust, low technology and it is relatively cheap to set up and operate.

However, it was considered not adequate for removal of salts such as sodium chloride, sulphates and others found in the wastewater.

It has been indicated that irrigation offered the most favourable option to deal with the mine wastewater problem and experiments in countries like South Africa encouraged BCL to proceed along this route.

Extensive investigations were carried out to assess the condition of farms that had been using BCL waste water for many years, the likely long term effect of this water on soils, crops and underground water systems and to identify suitable soils in the vicinity. 

During the consultation workshop it emerged that before the construction of the irrigation farm the mine discharged about 300m3 hr of mine wastewater and the water was high in mineral contents like sulphates, nickel and chlorides.

This was significantly outside the department of water affairs guidelines and it was also not acceptable for direct discharge into natural streams.

As such, the mine had to either stop the discharge completely or treat the water to acceptable quality.

To date, two hectares of lucerne has been cultivated and 4, 000 mango trees planted. Potatoes were planted and harvested last year.