The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand Basin marked the beginning of a new era for South Afri... more The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand Basin marked the beginning of a new era for South Africa in term of economic upliftment and also in terms of environmental problems resulting from the developing of mine residues. Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is one the environmental problems that resulted from this long-term mining. The key objective of this study was to investigate the relative contributions of AMD from point and diffuse pollution sources to the sulphate load in the Klip River and Blesbokspruit draining the Central and East Rand goldfields. The onset of oxidation of pyrite which dominates the mineralogy of tailings dumps resulted in the release of acidic water high in heavy metals entering nearby river systems, this type of pollution sources is known as diffuse. Point pollution sources in this study refer to the partially-treated water being released by Grootvlei mine and ERPM into the Blesbokspruit and Klip River. It was concluded from this desktop study that point pollution sources are contributing greater proportions of AMD (32 965-40 420 tons/yr) relative to diffuse sources. The impacted rivers are tributaries of the Vaal River which is major water supply for Gauteng and has been affected by upstream water with deteriorating quality. Thus, the removal of salt loads from the point pollution sources through desalination (Van der Merwe et al, 2003) is an option to consider in the amelioration of the water quality reaching the Vaal River and other downstream users. The magnitude of the effective treatment will depend on the proportion that point source pollution contributes to the total salt load.
The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand Basin marked the beginning of a new era for South Afri... more The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand Basin marked the beginning of a new era for South Africa in term of economic upliftment and also in terms of environmental problems resulting from the developing of mine residues. Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is one the environmental problems that resulted from this long-term mining. The key objective of this study was to investigate the relative contributions of AMD from point and diffuse pollution sources to the sulphate load in the Klip River and Blesbokspruit draining the Central and East Rand goldfields. The onset of oxidation of pyrite which dominates the mineralogy of tailings dumps resulted in the release of acidic water high in heavy metals entering nearby river systems, this type of pollution sources is known as diffuse. Point pollution sources in this study refer to the partially-treated water being released by Grootvlei mine and ERPM into the Blesbokspruit and Klip River. It was concluded from this desktop study that point pollution sources are contributing greater proportions of AMD (32 965-40 420 tons/yr) relative to diffuse sources. The impacted rivers are tributaries of the Vaal River which is major water supply for Gauteng and has been affected by upstream water with deteriorating quality. Thus, the removal of salt loads from the point pollution sources through desalination (Van der Merwe et al, 2003) is an option to consider in the amelioration of the water quality reaching the Vaal River and other downstream users. The magnitude of the effective treatment will depend on the proportion that point source pollution contributes to the total salt load.
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