Driving Zimbabweans, the description they know of their country is, "it's a cattle country". To anyone driver who has gone through local training it's emphasized to exercise caution because generally we have cattle country wide and when they go stray, can cause road accidents. Fauna and flora are part of our heritage as a nation, and a driving force for our economy namely under tourism and agriculture. I'm sure you know where in driving at especially with my opening remarks so contradictory to the headline but depicts how heap leaching is a hazard to our heritage. Zimbabwe is blessed with so many water bodies that support animals and people and are at risk of contamination from heap leaching, if preventive procedures are not taken.
Some may not be familiar with heap leaching, and will try to describe it. Maybe you have come across it and have not recognized it. So traditionally miners grind ore into sand using stamp mills, hummer mills and bow mills. The sand is then put into tanks for a process called cyanidation. A chemical cyanide in a solution melts gold residue in the sand and the gold is recovered from the solution using carbon rods. Miners have to ensure safe disposal of the solution after the process as it is hazardous to life. Under heap leaching process is just large scale pausing more risk in cyanide solution handling. An impermeable plastic is in a big area like 200 meter square and then heap loads of soil or gravel using front loaders and tippers to like 6 meter height and level the area such that the area can be irrigated using drip lines. The area is irrigated using cyninade solution, melting gold and collected on one end. The challenge with the process is it's robustness the project, that translates to huge quantities of soil exposed to chemicals and quantity of solution to the disposed that will end up seepage into our water bodies.
In many countries like Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary they have actually banned the process and as a country that is so dependent on its fauna and flora are we not negligent to be permitting the Chinese to do the practice. Some may feel the article is targeted to some miners and we should dwell on our legislation deficit. Our mining laws cover leaching vetting processes bundling all types but there is no explicit legislation framework separating traditional tank leaching to heap leaching as the environmental risk differ. As a nation if we continue as by standers and watch, later we have our biodiversity shrinking because we chose to leave the dangerous permitting procedures and expectations to the due diligence and prudence of the EMA officials shoulders.
Lemione Hesk, Safety Desk
