On Sunday the 14th of June, Carte Blanche screened a programme about the proposed mining at Moutonshoek, that, should it go ahead, is very likely to affect the Verlorenvlei RAMSAR site.
To view the transcript, visit this page.
An extract:
[Moutonshoek Public Meeting 30 April 2009] Man 1: “A mine like this uses huge amounts of water, massive amounts of water and you are going to rob the water that is going to the vlei and to the farmers all the way down. We cannot have that!”
[Moutonshoek Public Meeting 30 April 2009] Man 2: “Then you come here and say that jobs will be created. How many people will get work? Maybe I’m angry like the farmers, but it seems as if you’ve come here to mess around and then you saw that there is Tungsten here to mine!”
Derek Watts (Carte Blanche presenter): “This is what the fight is all about – the fertile Mouton’s valley near Piketberg on the West Coast. A group of businessmen want to turn this into a Tungsten mine – a huge open pit more than a hundred metres deep.
Johannes van der Walt (Director – Batla Bongani Minerals): “Look at the bigger picture. Look, I didn’t put the deposit there. I didn’t find it there. It is there, it’s not going to go away.”
Johannes van der Walt is a director of Batla Minerals, a French mining company. Together with a South African mining company, Bongani Minerals, they intend to mine tungsten in this valley. In March this year, the department of minerals and energy gave Bongani Minerals permission to apply for mining rights. South Africa gets most of its tungsten from China, but a fairly low grade of tungsten was found here in the late 1970s by Anglo American and is the only significant deposit in the country.
Derek: “But you say ‘strategic’ and ‘sizeable’ and Anglo said it is uneconomical?”
Johannes: “It was at the end of 70s, beginning of the 80s that they did it and at that stage the tungsten was ten times… was worth ten times less than today. So then, it wasn’t economically viable”
But agriculture in the Moutonshoek Valley has also grown significantly since then. The fifteen farmers in the area produce export grapes, wine, citrus and breed race horses. Also in the valley lies Verlorenvlei, an internationally recognised wetland that is meant to be conserved. Farmers are adamant that an open-cast mine, 50 hectares wide and 200 metres deep, will destroy the valley and their enterprises.
Bennie van der Merwe (Farmer): “It will basically destroy the underground water; we’re talking dust pollution, we’re talking slimes dams. I’m told that if the wind blows over the slimes dams from the toxic waste, it creates a green fog that then could extend all the way down the valley. It is unbearable and unthinkable.”
Bennie van der Merwe is chairperson of the valley coalition fighting the proposed mine. He started to farm here 15 years ago, specialising in export table grapes, citrus and race horses… But there’s also a well-known family breeding horses in the valley.
Derek: “Mary Slack, daughter of the late Harry Oppenheimer, owns a race horse stud about eight kilometres from the proposed open cast mine. It’s tranquil, it has all the ideal conditions and, although it’s only been up and running for less than a decade, it has produced a number of equine champions.”
John Everett has been Mary Slack’s farm manager for the past six years. Horses are temperamental animals and he believes the blasting, dust and pollution will affect them.
John Everett (Mary Slack’s farm manager): “We are one hundred percent dependent on the water coming from the top corner, which comes directly through the mine… or the proposed site, anyway. Our water will be polluted, the underground water will go and, with horses grazing, so the pollution will be in the grazing. There’s no way of getting away from it.”
Derek: “There’s a certain irony in that Mary Slack’s father’s company, Anglo American, first identified the tungsten deposits in this fertile valley way back in the 70s, but they decided not to go ahead with the mining.”
Thirty years on and Mary Slack is one of those opposing the idea of a mine. Johannes van der Walt finds this ironic.
Johannes: “The opposition we get from the valley [are] the people that made their money from the project we are busy with by finding deposits like this mining them.”
Derek: “Are you talking about the Oppenheimers?”
Johannes: “Well, they did as well.”
John and other farmers say they will have to lay off workers if the project goes ahead.
John: “We employ some 52 people here, you know. What are they going to do if the farm does close? We can all move on, but they are locals; you’ve got to think about their future too.”
Janet Mias has worked on these farms for the past 12 years and she is worried.
Janet Mias (Farm worker): “Sir, where will I get a job? Where will I get food? Where will I get a house? Where will I get water from? Do I have to die here instead? They must realize that there are families living on this farm. We have husbands… who says my husband will get a job on the mine?”
Right now, 500 permanent workers and a thousand seasonal workers, mostly women, are employed in the valley. Batla Minerals says the mine will create 470 jobs.
Derek: “But it’s not a lot of people being employed; it’s a handful.”
Johannes: “A minimum of 400 at the moment.”
Derek: “…When there are 500 employed already and a thousand casual?”
Johannes: “Why are they going to go away?”
Derek: “Of course they are going to go away.”
Johannes: “Why?”
Derek: “The farmers around…”
Johannes: “Right in the corner, 1 500 workers from the corner right down to Elandsbaai… why are they going to go away suddenly now?”
Derek: “Because the possibility and likelihood is that that water table will be polluted…”
Johannes: “Uninformed opinion… uninformed.”
What Johannes also regards as an uninformed opinion is that the valley will be destroyed.
Johannes: “We need to do an environmental impact study, that’s what we want to do. We need to go on the ground and the people don’t want us to go on the ground.”Bongani Minerals was awarded a prospecting right in 2007. But the mining group was taken to court by farmers who said they hadn’t followed the right procedures. The case was never heard, because the prospecting right expired. Nevertheless, in March this year Bongani submitted its mining right application to the DME.
Derek: “It’s all about tungsten used in light bulbs that are the old fashioned variety, and gun barrels. But strangely enough, its main use is in mining; it makes drill bits rock hard. China’s mines are becoming too deep and dangerous, so the focus is right here on this valley.”
According to the Minerals Act, Johannes and his team now have to compile a full Environmental Impact Assessment within the next six months. He argues that these findings might differ from their preliminary scoping report, which shows only five opportunities, but 18 constraints of possible damage to the valley. Aubrey Withers is their environmental consultant.
Aubrey Withers (Withers Environmental Consultants): “The minerals that we are looking at, and the veldspars within the granit, are highly erodible chemically, so they can get into the water. The ground water could become more contaminated with minerals, making it more saline, and that obviously is a problem.”
Withers identified that blasting could place at risk two underground water storage systems, also known as aquifers. Philippa Huntly from the Wildlife and Environment Society, WESSA, says this is one of their main concerns.
Philippa Huntly (Wildlife & Environment Society SA): “We just don’t know the extent of the effect of that blasting. It could be as far as Namaqualand for all we know. To go ahead and to start blasting on top of aquifers is a very dangerous thing to do. People could be without water, boreholes could run dry for all we know.”
The other big conservation concern is the Verlorenvlei Ramsar wetlands site, fed by a river which flows near the proposed mine.
Aubrey: “The Krom Antonies Rivier or river is certainly one of the major rivers providing fresh water to Verlorenvlei and that cannot be polluted. If that cannot be addressed, then you do not mine.”
Philippa: “So that would mean reduced flows, less water going into the vlei, which would probably increase salinity… which would probably then affect the flora, which will then affect the fauna.”
Johannes believes these risks are all manageable.
Derek: “But the scoping report says it all.”
Johannes: “What does it say?”
Derek: “Well, do you want to go through it? …there are 18 constraints”
Johannes: “It are constraints that are manageable.”
Derek: “Manageable?”
Johannes: “Yes, definitely. If they say, ‘Listen, it is a definite, you will pollute the valley and the whole Verlorenvlei is going to be…’, then we won’t even go further. But that’s not the case.”
Derek: “Well they say there’s going to be a high impact on the environment and the water resources. What more do you want?”
Johannes: “How many pivot points, centre pivot points, are down the valley? How much water does each one use? We are probably just going to use the same water as one of those pivot points”
Aubrey: “It’s a closed system and one would recycle water, and you would also treat that effluent coming out of the plant and contain that so that you don’t have pollution.”
But the mine has a lifespan of just 20 years. And in two decades of mining, agriculture in the valley could be long gone. Compensation hasn’t been discussed yet, but the DME says that the Batla/Bongani group will have to pay the farmers and that, since democracy, no land has been expropriated by the State for mining purposes.
Aubrey: “So certainly it’s going to have an impact on the farmers, but I can’t see that it will have an impact on the whole valley.”
Johannes: “There is between two-and-a-half and $3-billion worth of value in the ground.”
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To view the full transcript, and accompanying disclaimer visit this page.
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