Mining water use

The water supply in Platfontein comes from the water distribution system but it is contaminated and therefore not safe to drink. That might be because Platfontein is closer to Kimberly which is a mining town as water in mining towns usually has a problem. In Richards Bay (another mining town) there is a lot of salt in the water and in Kimberly there is a lot of dirt in the water. For example, if you were to boil the water from Kimberly you will see dirt at the bottom of your kettle with brown stains which are hard to remove. This just shows how dirty the water is. And if there have been water cuts for a couple of days and when you try to open tap the water will be brown, which is a major problem in Platfontein, hence the need for better water purification systems in place. As a result of consuming contaminated water, people in Platfontein are already suffering from water-related illnesses including diarrhea and skin conditions.

The community is nestled on the northwest shore of Lake Athabasca and downstream of tar sands/mining extraction and hydroelectric dams. The challenge the community faces is the lack of data on the industry water use and how that is or will affect the community in the future. There is a need for data that will help with informed decision making for active stewardship and monitoring. We have estimated that it will cost about 17 billion dollars in liability if reclamation and remediation is not done to bring back the boreal ecosystem. Therefore, we need data to aid in decision-making and adaptive management to determine whether the current management practices and solutions are effectively working. This could be data on biodiversity, for example of benthic vertebrates to access the health of the water ecosystems and also water quality. Currently we do not have such data. Right now, they are doing progressive reclamation where they are revegetating as they are mining but we cannot evaluate whether this is successful or not. We do not know if the species they are using for revegetation are improving environmental quality or not. We need to develop criteria to determine the success of reclamation by evaluating if specified targets are met with a particular time period and if these are not met then identify what could be done differently – adaptative management.