Uranium pollution of the Wonderfonteinspruit, 1997-2008 Part 2: Uranium in water – concentrations, loads and associated risks

Abstract

Uranium (U) pollution of the surface water and groundwater of the Wonderfonteinspruit (WFS) catchment caused by gold mining over more than a century has been an ongoing concern for several decades. Triggered by a recent increase in media attention, political pressure on governmental authorities has mounted to assess the associated health risks and implement appropriate mitigation measures. However, owing to the complexity of the catchment arising from the presence of a multitude of dischargers, a complex karst hydrology and large-scale modifications thereof by deep-level gold mining, most attempts to address the issue to date have been limited to uncoordinated ad hoc studies generally suffering from a lack of temporal and spatial representivity of the underlying data. Part 2 of a series of 2 papers aimed at quantifying the extent of mining-related U pollution in the WFS catchment, this paper addresses the pollution of surface water, groundwater, as well as mine effluent.

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