Nyl Action Group calls on community to participate

“If ever there was a risky, poorly researched mining project, then Sylvania's Volspruit is it!”

This was how Wayne Knight, one of the landowners affected by the planned platinum mine just south of Mokopane concluded in his written comments following the last meeting between the proposed mine’s
environmental consultant and the community.
Sylvania Platinum plans an open cast pla-tinum mine in the Nyl floodplain on the farm Volspruit and the public participation process it needs to follow to obtain a mining licence is drawing to a close at the end of this month.
Another public participation meeting is scheduled for Thursday, 23 January, at 10:00 at the Protea Park Hotel in Mokopane. The Nyl Action Group, of which Knight is a member, called on the Mokopane community to attend this meeting and let their concerns for the river system be heard.
Knight and the members of the Nyl Action Group feel very strongly that mining at Volspruit should not be allowed.
“It is illegal to mine in a wetland,” he wrote in his submission. He also explains that the water rights in the Nyl aquifer are already over subscribed and that the entire wetland and associated catchment is thought to provide drinking water through bore holes to more than 400 000 people and possibly as many as 600 000 people, depending on the true and still unknown boundaries of the aquifer.
Knight also expressed his concern that Sylvania Platinum’s real motive for building the mine has more to do with the Nyl’s water than with the platinum it intends to mine.
“By the admission of Sylvania representatives, the Volspruit mine’s ore grade is too low to justify a smelter and refinery on the Volspruit site, so the miners will need to process other mines’ ore at this site. Volspruit is sensitive (a wetland and river).
“It is also an established farming community with characteristics that will be destroyed by a mine and associated activities. This angle, of using the low grade ore to justify moving ore to this site from other mines merely support the Nyl Action Groups suspicion that Volspruit is nothing more than a water mine,” he wrote.
The Nyl Action Group’s legal advisor, Emile Honiball, pointed out that it could hold dire consequences for the town if Sylvania sets up a refinery and a smelter to process ore for other mines.
“Not only will this have an impact on air and water quality in the area, it will also change the entire dynamic of the town of Mokopane if its roads suddenly have to accommodate large numbers of trucks taking ore to the refinery.”
Honiball noted that all residents of the area will be affected by the mine and that everybody should attend the public participation meeting to ensure they know how the their lives will be affected. By participating people can also have a say in the rules according to which the mine has to operate, should it’s licence application be approved.
Honiball also noted that everybody from Modimolle to Bakenberg may be affected by mining in the Nyl. “Research by hydrologist, Andy Gubb, shows that the Nyl and the Mogalakwena is one river system with the bulk of its water being underground. So even the subsistence farmer living in a village north of Mokopane may be affected.”
“Let Sylvania mine on a more appropriate mining site, let them contaminate water that is not so precious, in and environment where the community will not be so detrimentally affected by their activities as this mine will.“
The department of mineral resources (DMR) has required the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) and EMPR (Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Management Programme) be submitted to the DMR on or before Tuesday, 28 January.
Accordingly the Draft EIA and EMPR reports will be available on Monday 13th January 2014. Notification will be sent out on this day and provide electronic links and addresses as to where these reports will be available.
The public comment period in terms of the application for a mining right will be closed on Thursday 13th February 2014.