Farmers hamstring tungsten mine plan
West coast vlei threatened
May 6, 2009
By Donwald Pressly
Residents and farmers in the Verlorenvlei valley are resisting plans for an open-cast mine to produce tungsten.
The valley is one of the Western Cape's most important estuarine systems and one of the largest natural wetlands along South Africa's west coast.
China is the biggest producer of tungsten, but many of its mines are now deep and dangerous. Tungsten is used in gun barrels and light bulbs, but its principal application is in mining. It hardens drill bits.
Verlorenvlei was declared a Ramsar site in 1991. The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.
Bongani Minerals, headed by Kimberley diamond rewashing merchant Trevor Pikwane, has applied to the Department of Minerals and Energy for the right to mine tungsten and molybdenum ore on farms in the district near Elands Bay, northwest of Cape Town.
Pikwane declined to comment on the application and referred queries to shareholder Phenelo Sehunelo, who did not respond to calls. Pikwane, who also heads Pikwane Diamonds, said Sehunelo had all the relevant information "and I don't want to be misquoted".
Farmers and landowners in the fertile valley upstream from the wetland have been refusing to allow access to their land for an environmental impact survey to be carried out by Aubrey Withers, an environmental consultant based in Stellenbosch.
Mining has been bitterly opposed by Mary Slack, daughter of the late Harry Oppenheimer who owns a horseracing stud in the valley; Bennie van der Merwe, the owner of Moutonshoek farm, where mining is set to take place; and Cape Town engineer Garry Sheard, who runs a small lavender farm on the vlei.
It is understood that about 300 jobs will be created by the open-cast mining operation, but farms would lose about 500 permanent and 1 000 temporary jobs because of the disruption.
Slack originally challenged Bongani Minerals' application for prospecting rights in 2005, and won the case on a technical point. Ironically her father's company, Anglo American, first helped Union Carbide to identify the tungsten deposits in the valley in the 1970s.
Bongani Minerals made another application two years ago, which was granted in April 2007. Landowners instituted legal action against the Department of Minerals and Energy, but the licence lapsed before a judicial review could come to court. Bongani Minerals has now applied to the department for mining rights and wants to carry out an environmental impact assessment, which is required in terms of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act.
Withers reported that Bongani Minerals had applied under the act to mine tungsten ore and molybdenum in three portions of one farm and on one portion of another. The application was accepted by the Department of Minerals and Energy on March 25.
Environmental and mining artist Jeannette Unite said a key issue was "whether one should view mining as more important than the environment and human livelihoods, including those of farmers and farm workers".
Unite attended a meeting of interested parties with Withers last Thursday.
Meanwhile, Sheard pointed to the scoping report, which describes the mining project and identifies the scope of its impact, drawn up by Withers and his team. This refers to environmental "constraints".
Among the problems were the building up of sediment "and excavation through aquifer systems", Sheard noted.
Other constraints identified by Withers included that a large area of arable land and a number of farming livelihoods would be affected.
The mining areas would also be close to the Krom Antonies River, which feeds the Verlorenvlei wetland.
There was also the possibility that the river course could be modified, encouraging alien invader species "and dramatic movement of large volumes of sand during floods", the scoping report notes.
Withers said much of the surveying work could not take place because his team had not been allowed on to the land, owing to farmers' resistance.
He noted that the open-cast plan by Bongani Minerals was considered the only technically viable mine design to extract low-grade but commercially viable tungsten-molybdenum.
This was distinct from tunneling. Open mines are used when deposits of minerals or rock are near the surface. The envisaged life of the mine would be 20 years.
Withers noted that a detailed stormwater management plan was needed for the site, including specific measures to reduce the rate of runoff into freshwater ecosystems. He argued that the working population in the area would increase and that the opportunity arose to clear alien vegetation and rehabilitate stretches of the Krom Antonies River.
There would be socioeconomic benefits "both to the surrounding farming community, to the government and the local municipality".
After a public meeting at the weekend, Van der Merwe said that he, the owners of the other directly affected farms - cousins Manus and Johannes Coetzee - and other groups from the Tierhoek Trust and Swift Investments had not been given any answers. "After four years of their snooping around they had no answers," he said.
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