Mining Mirror April 2018 | Page 17

Mine excursion Work is in full swing at BRM’s Chilwavhusiku Colliery in Gauteng. Ndavhe Mareda, entrepreneur and chairperson of BRM and the Makole Group. farms, and with the introduction of mining activity to the area, the neighbours raised environmental management concerns. The issues have since been amicably resolved and the relationships with its neighbouring stakeholders are being managed and have improved considerably. Meyer says they have implemented stringent dust control and groundwater monitoring measures to mitigate the environmental risks. Chilwavhusiku uses two water bowsers (one of these belongs to the community and was donated by Stefanutti) and has installed an irrigation pipe water system along the access roads and planted grass on the topsoil stockpiles to suppress the dust. The other major change was to use innovative blasting techniques that minimise the impact on the adjacent properties, such as electronic detonation to minimise air shock and through-seam blasting techniques, where possible, to minimise the number of blasts. Chilwavhusiku seams Although the Bronkhorstspruit coal lobe is removed from the Witbank Coalfield, its characteristics are very similar, and Meyer suggests that the two deposits might have been joined a long time ago. Therefore, the same nomenclature is used to name the different seams, namely Seam One, which is the oldest and deepest layer, then (in order from bottom to top) Seam Two, Seam Three, Seam Four, and Seam Five. The main seam to be mined at Chilwavhusiku is Seam Two, which varies in thickness from The BRM team invested plenty of time and capital into additional drilling activities from the very start of the project and that ensured the mine was not caught off guard. APRIL 2018 MINING MIRROR [15]