The impact of acid mine drainage in South Africa

of late and the number of short courses and workshops devoted to the topic has mushroomed. The current interest was prompted mainly by concern arising from the decanting of contaminated water from the old gold mines in the Krugersdorp area into the Cradle of Humankind. This led to the establishment of an interministerial committee on AMD in late 2010. As part of this initiative, a technical task group was formed to investigate the problem and to recommend possible solutions. The report was finalised in December 2010, 1 and focused primarily on the immediate problems arising from gold mining and in particular on the now defunct mines in the Western Basin (Krugersdorp area), the Central Basin (Roodepoort to Boksburg) and the Eastern Basin (Brakpan, Springs and Nigel area). However, the problem of AMD is of far wider extent and to understand it in its entirety it is necessary to take a much broader geographic view.