Water Wheel March/April 2011

Abstract

A uthorities from the Northern Cape have expressed their concern about the environmental impacts of often illicit alluvial diamond mining along the Lower Vaal River. Due to the meandering nature of the Vaal River, diamonds are found both in the river channels and on the floodplains where the river once ran. The deposits are actively mined by large-scale miners, informal and small-scale miners. While these precious stones play an important role in the economy of the Northern Cape, removing them is a destructive process, causing many problems for the environment as well as people living downstream. Large-scale miners rely heavily on hydraulic mining techniques, dredging on the river banks, removing vast areas of floodplain and riparian vegetation using heavy bulldozers and machinery to expose potential diamond-yielding gravel deposits. These operations have resulted in the significant clearing of trees and other vegetation. Clearing of such vegetation directly contributes to rapid loss of soil moisture, bank erosion and topsoil loss.

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