Valterra Platinum, formerly Amplats, has assured communities surrounding its flagship Mogalakwena mine in Limpopo that its tailings facilities pose no risk to lives.
The Vaalkop and Blinkwater tailings storage facilities (TSF) 30km northwest of Mokopane hold waste from Valterra’s mining operations at Mogalakwena. The Blinkwater 1 dam has a life of mine up until 2028, and Blinkwater 2 is under construction to add capacity.
Some residents of villages close to the mine told Business Times last month they were concerned about the Vaalkop TSF because the company had distributed flyers with instructions on what to do in the event of a collapse.
This week Valterra took journalists to visit the site.
Willie Theron, executive head of mining operations, said the flyers had been distributed only because it was a precaution required by the global industry standard on tailings management (GISTM), a voluntary mechanism for the safe management of tailings facilities.
Mine operators had to advise the communities near tailings dams about action to act in case of a dam failure, Theron said.
Agit Singh, group executive head of processing operations, told journalists that Vaalkop and Blinkwater were built according to the safest design principles.
Singh said Valterra conducts “continuous critical control monitoring” online and physically, with excess water constantly extracted from Vaalkop, which has been “dormant” for the past four years. Some of the extracted water is reused for mining operations.
“There is no water in there, it is drained out; this is a dry TSF,” he said.
Singh said the group did not have to sign on to the GISTM.
“We are not compelled to, but we did. The standard looks at a tailings facility from all aspects, it looks at it from a social aspect, it looks at it from a technical aspect, it looks at it from a design point of view and a monitoring point of view,” he said.
Valterra spokesperson Cindy Maneveld said on Friday there was no water on or close to the surface of the Vaalkop TSF.
The factor of safety is above our required standard, aligned to international best practice, and is consistently improving as the TSF continues to dry out
— Cindy Maneveld, Valterra spokesperson
“The factor of safety is above our required standard, aligned to international best practice, and is consistently improving as the TSF continues to dry out. The TSF has online measurements installed to measure movement and pore pressures, and the instruments have indicated no concerns.”
Herman Kemp acting general manager for concentrators of Mogalakwena, said the company was “meticulous” in monitoring the tailings dams.
“It is an extremely sensitive area of mining. We have pulled out all the stops when it comes to making sure that our dams are safe,” Kemp said.
“Some of the monitoring includes land surveys and we do daily satellite displacement monitoring to see if there is any movement of the walls. We have in-depth knowledge of our slope stability, and we also monitor the water pressure of the dams,” he said.
Kemp said a designated civil engineer is responsible for monitoring the TSF full time, and an independent engineer assesses the adequacy of the design.
An independent technical review panel visits the group’s TSFs once a year to inspect safety standards, he said.
Over and above that, another external dam safety expert panel conducts inspections once every five years at all Valterra concentrator tailings facilities. The last one conducted at Mogalakwena was in 2022, with no major problems flagged.
The most recent tailings dam disaster in South Africa was at Jagersfontein in the Free State three years ago, when a mudslide flattened homes and resulted in three deaths. Five employees of an engineering company are due to appear in court next month on charges arising from the TSF collapse.
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