greenies, as posted on fse

Waterberg needs pollution protection fast
September 11, 2009

By Justin Brown

The pristine Waterberg area on the western side of Limpopo faces the risk of being destroyed and turned into one of South Africa's most polluted areas if further coal mining and power station developments take hold in the area.

The 15 000km2 Waterberg region is a dry, environmentally sensitive area known for its game farms, conservation areas and wildlife.

The 8 000km2 Waterberg reserve is a UN biosphere and a natural heritage site.

The reserve is home to 129 mammal, 350 bird and 2 000 plant species, with many endemic or red data insect, fish and reptile species, making it a key conservation area.

Eskom's power stations in Mpumalanga generate huge amounts of pollution as a result of burning coal to generate power.

Some analysts project that Mpumalanga coal production could start to decline 20 years from now.

Unless the public insists that Eskom put in place proper mitigation measures, that kind of pollution could move to the Waterberg and destroy the area.

Despite the clear limits to the development of the Waterberg area, there are moves afoot to try to alleviate the water shortage. These include plans to raise the wall of the Mokolo dam in the region and the possibility of building a water pipeline from the Hartbeespoort dam in the Magaliesberg to the Waterberg.

The Matimba is the only power station in the Waterberg. Because of the shortage of water, that station is dry cooled using fans rather than water as is the case in Mpumalanga.

Water demand at Lephalale, a town near Matimba, is expected to grow from 25.5 million cubic metres in 2005 to 63.3 million cubic metres by 2025 as a result of new coal mines and power stations.

Eskom is building a second station, the R100 billion Medupi plant, and it could even build a third such station in the area.

The Waterberg has an estimated coal resource of £ billion tons of coal but viable reserves of only 3.5 billion tons.

Given the vastness of the resource, Exxaro Resources, the only company currently mining coal in the Waterberg, has forecast that the region could be mined for coal for the next 200 years.


Independent power producers (IPPs) and a number of junior coal mining developers are eyeing the coal field, including Firestone Energy, Namane Resources, Resource Generations and Gleneagles Gold.

Anglo Coal, BHP Billiton, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and Sasol are also active in the area.

Sasol and the IDC are developing the Mafutha coal-to-liquids project, which could cost as much at $16bn (R120bn). Anglo Coal is developing coal bed methane in the Waterberg.

Exxaro hopes to take an equity stake in the coal mine that could be built as part of the Mafutha project.

The mining company has estimated that more than R353bn could be spent on power station and coal mine investment that the company, Eskom and IPPs could make in the Waterberg by as early as 2018.

In August 2006 Eskom said it could built up to eight power stations in the Waterberg over 20 years.

Across the border in an extension of the Waterberg coal field in Botswana, Toronto-listed CIC Energy is looking to spend $3bn on turning its Mmamabula project into a coal mine and power station that will supply Eskom with power.

However, at this stage the CIC project is a no-go due to Eskom's funding problems and a lack of a local regulatory and legal framework for independent power producers.

The question is: does South Africa face an either-or choice between vital and urgently needed energy extraction at the cost of destroying another irreplaceable environmental asset?

At this stage, nothing definite is being done to mitigate the environmental carnage that all this development will cause.

Is it not obvious that the government needs to move rapidly to ensure that the lessons learnt from Mpumalanga's heavy pollution are not repeated in the Waterberg?