Call to Appeal heavy mineral mining permit that will dredge 27km of West Coast

Protect the West Coast (PTWC) has expressed grave concern over the recent Environmental Authorisation (EA) and mining right granted by the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) to Whale Head Minerals, which will enable them to mine fragile coastal waters between Port Nolloth and Alexander Bay that includes the Holgat River mouth.

The ironically named Whale Head Minerals (Pty) Ltd has permission to dredge for heavy minerals such as garnet, zirconium, rutile and leucoxene in and beyond the surf zone along a 27km stretch of coast to the north and south of the river.

Managing Director of PTWC Mike Schlebach urged the public to appeal the granting of this right, uploaded to PTWC public participation portal Ripl, by registering as an Interested & Affected Person (I&AP) by the deadline of 11 December.

“This one is a big red flag. There is a lack of science on how to mitigate against the industrial scale dredging of the sea floor, when many tons of sediment per hour is removed from the seafloor and pumped back into the water column, causing turbidity that can result in the loss of sandy and rocky habitats and associated benthic flora and fauna.

“The issue here is how ad hoc some of these mining rights are. It’s a destructive form of mining with a known record of damaging benthic ecosystems, and right at an important river mouth, one of very few critical biodiversity estuarine environments that are so important to the West Coast,” he said, adding: “It’s hard to understand how the DMPR can allow this to happen.” 

The 830 hectare (ha) area that Whale Head wishes to target is part of a 3,095 ha mining concession that belongs to state-owned Alexkor diamond mining company. Whale Head approached Alexkor for permission to mine the area after recognising that it was under-utilised for heavy mineral mining, and Alexkor agreed. Whale Head applied to the DMRE for a mining right, which was granted. 

Whale Head claimed that at full production, approximately 30 direct and indirect jobs “could be created”, while the Alexkor management team “fully appreciates the benefit of the project to Alexkor and more so for the employment prospects for the community at large”.

However, to conduct the dredging of heavy minerals in the marine environment, Whale Head had to apply to the DMRE for another EA, which was subsequently granted. Despite repeated attempts to locate the EMPr at the DMPR, at the time of writing, only a draft EMPr could be found – from June 2024 – that laid the foundation for the original mining right to be granted.

Armed with its new EA, Whale Head will head just offshore beyond the surf zone into slightly deeper waters using a high tech vessel equipped with major hydraulic machinery that includes high volume dredging, cutting tools and powerful suction pumps, as well as other processing equipment to suck up the seafloor and pump it overboard once the minerals have been processed and extracted. 

However, according to a report commissioned by the SA Council for Geoscience in 2018 (Biccard et al), chances of mitigating against seabed excavation was limited, and despite careful efforts to plan and manage the discharge of tailings to minimize impacts “by ensuring deposition occurs in depleted areas … the overall consequence of seabed disturbance and tailings disposal is severe and poses a high risk, with no effective mitigation measures available”. 

From the results of past studies, it is well established that mining in the intertidal zone of sandy beaches severely influences the diversity and community structure of the invertebrate macrofauna of the beach itself, and the benthic ecosystem of adjacent intertidal and shallow subtidal habitats. This is more specifically of concern near estuarine habitats. 

Other concerns include the loss of marine heritage, such as shipwrecks lost at war, or other vessels with a specific national or international significance. Wrecks of archaeological significance are hard to pinpoint without extensive research, and would have to be dealt with on an ad hoc basis, should they be discovered during mining operations. 

Ocean mining can also disturb hitherto unknown cultural, historical, archaeological or paleontological artefacts, as set out in the National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA) of 1999. 

Schlebach said he was perplexed that the authority mandated by the government to manage mining applications, the DMRE, encouraged a constant stream of applications, particularly one that was so obviously poorly thought out along a coast where many areas have been permanently damaged by mining. 

“Applications to prospect or mine are mostly granted ad hoc and without clarity on whether there are existing applications or rights in these areas. It highlights the deluge of mining applications in the region, as well as the urgent need for a moratorium on all new mining and a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to determine the potential cumulative effects of mining on this fragile stretch of coast,” Schlebach added.

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