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THE Bulawayo City Council and key stakeholders must come together and bring a stop to illegal mining activities at the banks of the city’s supply dams.

This follows a report in today’s paper, of panners involved in illegal gold mining at the city’s catchment areas like Inyankuni, Upper and Lower Ncema dams in Esigodini, Umzingwane District in Matabeleland South.

The panners, popularly known as “amakorokoza”, have reportedly scaled up their illegal activity in the city’s catchment areas and in the process posing a serious threat to Bulawayo’s water supplies.

The panning activities are also causing siltation, an accumulation of fine soil that is blamed for diminishing water supplies in the dams that serve the city.

Authorities have said gold panning activities have negatively affected the river system.

They said the drying up of dams and rivers in Umzingwane District has been blamed largely on siltation.

A recent visit by the Chronicle newscrew to the affected areas revealed that a lot of alluvial gold panning activities take place on the river beds and banks of the Umzingwane and Mtshabezi.

A large proportion of the catchment area for Bulawayo’s water supply dams falls within this area.

Major dams such as Umzingwane, Upper Ncema, Lower Ncema, Inyankuni and Mtshabezi are under threat due to a spike in illegal gold panning. The local community, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) and the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) are the worst affected by the illegal gold panning activities, which cause land degradation and siltation of dams.

The Environmental Management Agency (Ema)’s provincial manager for Matabeleland South Mr Decent Ndlovu said they are extremely worried about the illegal gold mining activities happening on the river banks and water catchment areas.

“Gold panning has devastating impacts on the environment such as deforestation as they burn bushes and use harmful chemicals like mercury.

“These environmental impacts are a result of destructive mining, wasteful mineral extraction and processing practices and techniques used by the illegal gold panners,” said Mr Ndlovu.

“Eventually these contaminations are washed into the dams, increasing the risk of siltation, flooding and drying up of water reservoirs. Land degradation also results in the loss of aesthetic value of the landscape as mining activities leave open pits and mounds of sand.”

Scientific studies have revealed that mercury, used for gold amalgamation in artisanal mining, is harmful to humans and exposure to the element causes skin disease, infertility and birth defects.

When inhaled, the chemical can also cause lung cancer.

According to a recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, the amalgamation process transforms elemental mercury into methyl mercury. Methyl mercury, one of the most toxic organic compounds, is a powerful neurotoxin that works its way up the food chain through bio-accumulation. This poses a threat to the health of animals, humans and aquatic life.

Zinwa corporate communications and marketing manager Mrs Marjorie Munyonga said they were worried with the levels of siltation in the country’s rivers and dams.

BCC corporate communications officer, Ms Bongiwe Ngwenya said rangers and police are struggling to effectively conduct routine patrols in the affected areas due to inadequate resources.

“Routine patrols are ongoing at our water catchment areas. However, the main challenge we are facing revolves around limited human resources and vehicles,” said Ms Ngwenya. She said in most cases, the illegal gold panners would be armed with dangerous weapons.

The situation is especially alarming given the fact that Bulawayo has in the past years been rocked by water shortages forcing BCC to introduce a 144-hour water shedding programme a few months ago.

An urgent and effective intervention to curb any further possible damage by the illegal panners has to be employed to make sure that these activities are totally eradicated.

It would be helpful for BCC, Zinwa, the police and members of the community to come together and come up with a lasting solution to the dangers posed by these illegal miners.

The matter is a very urgent one and should be treated with the urgency and seriousness it deserves.

The illegal panners must not be allowed to continue degrading the environment and exposing the water bodies to the risk of contamination.