The Zvishavane Town Council is paying the heavy cost of purifying water drawn from Ngezi River as illegal artisanal gold miners continue to pollute the water body, a senior official has said.
Council acting town secretary Max Mugandani said the local authority was using seven tonnes of ammonium sulphate per week. Mugandani said the water treatment chemical was costing the council millions of dollars every month.
He said miners use water from the river to process their gold ore in the process contaminating water.
“One of the biggest challenges we face in purifying water is that we have a number of artisanal miners in and around Ngezi River,” Mugandani said during a media tour of the Ngezi water treatment plant.
“Whatever they do to get their gold processed, they use water from the river and as a result pollute the water body and in the process affecting the quality of water in the river.”
Council’s acting technical engineer Munyaradzi Mageja weighed in saying the council was now in the second phase of rehabilitating filters at the water treatment plant to maintain the quality of clean water.
“We are in the second cycle of filter rehabilitation to maintain water quality and increase raw water uptake,” he said.
“However raw water turbidity remains high reaching around 500 units due to rainfall and activities by artisanal miners in our weir.
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“Our next phase is expansion starting with increasing raw water uptake followed by improvements in sedimentation and filtration.”
He said last year the council managed to install another small pump, which increased pumping capacity from an average 16 megalitres per day to approximately 23-24 megalitres per day.
According to the 2022 census Zvishavane has a population of 60 000 with the growing number of people pushing high the demand for clean potable water.
In early February, reports said the mining town had used ZiG808,976,687 to upgrade the sewer treatment plant, enhance water reticulation, acquire yellow machinery, and construct schools using devolution funds distributed by the government.
Council utilised ZiG 25,609,766.33 to upgrade the Mabhula sewer treatment plant, ZiG 13,779,750.10 for water reticulation upgrades and raw water metres worth ZiG5,899,414.67.
