Damaging concerns
Fear of pollution has pitted some local groups on the North Coast of KwaZulu Natal against mining companies that intend to operate there or are already established in the region.
One of these proposals is a mining site planned near the town of Mtunzini.
The mines say they will carry out rehabilitation work; Mtunzini says it will not be effective. It’s a difficult balance.
The mines provide jobs and some investment in the area. The fear is that the environmental cost of mining will be too high.
The city of Durban is also anxious about the return to the region of Thor Chemicals. Thor has said, without specifying details, that it wants to establish a plant near Durban as the base for its expansion further into Africa.
Durban has bitter memories of Thor, which in the 1980s and early 1990s had one of the world’s largest mercury reprocessing plants inland of Durban at Cato Ridge. Companies from around the world would ship mercury to the plant to be reprocessed.
In 1988 mercury contamination was discovered by the local water board in the adjoining Umgeni River, one of the major feeder rivers to the Inanda Dam. In 1990 Greenpeace sent a team to the area. Soil samples showed high deposits of mercury.
The worst happened when at least two workers at the plant died of mercury poiwildlife. soning in the early 1990s. Symptoms include personality changes, coma and death.
Government ordered the plant to shut down in 1994, but barrels of mercury waste had been stockpiled in the factory so the mercury contamination continued.
“That place is like a time bomb,” said Ephraim Summerton, a contract worker at the plant when it was closed. The families of the workers who died were awarded about US$2m when they approached courts in England, where Thor Holdings has its head office in Manchester.
A second class action by 20 workers received a settlement of about $400 000.
Thor, which now operates under the name of Guernica Chemicals in SA, is at present not a direct threat — and government departments, much more aware now of the danger of harmful chemicals, will be watching operations closely.
There is an ongoing battle between Exxaro Resources and Mtunzini. The company wants to switch to a new site on the edge of the town. Barbara Chedzey, who recently stepped down as chair of the Mtunzini Conservancy, says she realises that the mine is important for the employment of local people, but having the operation just a few hundred metres from houses on the town’s border will be “disastrous”.
“We will have to live under a cloud of dust from the mine. And we fear for the Mtunzini is famous for its bird life. The mine could stop the visits we get from birders. Ecotourism is an important part of the town’s economy.”
Exxaro’s mineral sands business operates as New Tronox in the area. It mines coal (it is a big supplier to Eskom), titanium slag, pig iron, zircon, zinc, lead and iron ore.
Apart from supplying jobs, this makes it an important producer of minerals, most of which are exported from the nearby port of Richards Bay.
So it’s a tough issue for provincial and national government. The mine is, as it claims, a valuable asset in the area.
The company says that after mining it will rehabilitate the area. Chedzey says this is not possible. Based on research it has done, and supported by wildlife and ecology groups, the Mtunzini Conservancy claims that the area will be permanently disfigured by large slimes dams.
“We just want them to move the mine further away and perhaps adopt a less damaging mining technique,” Chedzey says. Mining has not yet started.
Trevor Arran, Exxaro executive general manager, says that if the company is not allowed to mine at Mtunzini it will probably result in the closure of its business in KwaZulu Natal and the loss of hundreds of jobs.
Concerning the issue of slimes dams, he says: “They will not be slimes dams but fines dams. They will not contain the bad substances you find, for example, in gold mining dams. They will contain fine clay material.”
Tronox referred queries to documents that had been submitted about its position on mining operations in Zululand.
North of Mtunzini is another project that is upsetting conservationists. US company Tronox KZN Sands is strip mining beachfront sand dunes in an area 2 km wide and 17 km long. It rehabilitates the dunes after mining, and they appear to have returned to a natural state, but eco-groups say a mined dune can never be fully rehabilitated.
The mining operation has again split the local community, with mainly black people in the area supporting the project because it provides employment, and the mainly white conservationists critical of the damage it is causing to the dunes.
It seems there is no easy balance between conservation and mining.