Illegal Mining Obstructing Water Inflows To Umzingwane Dam, Says Coltart

Bulawayo Mayor, Councillor David Coltart, said illegal gold mining activities are obstructing rainwater from flowing into Umzingwane Dam, worsening the city’s water challenges.

In his State of the City address at Nkulumane Hall in Ward 22 on Sunday, Coltart expressed his disappointment, saying despite the region receiving a lot of rainfall in recent weeks, the water levels in all of the city’s dams had only increased by 4%. He said:

We have to sort out the water situation, we have a major problem with our dams with all the rain that we have had these last few months. Our dams since yesterday were still sitting at 28%. With all this rain our dams have only gone up by 4%.

Last Saturday I rode to Mzingwane Dam to go and see for myself what was happening. I was shocked because I rode 40km and I didn’t even see one stream flowing, not one after all that rain. Why? Illegal gold panning! They have dug up our rivers.

Coltart also gave an update on the city’s plans to construct a dam that was proposed in the 1990s. He said:

It is a huge problem, therefore, we have to deal with that but our dams are not sufficient. As council, we are now focused on building the Glass Block Dam.

In December I went to Morocco to the African Development Bank. We had a very constructive meeting to try and raise the US$99,9 million to build it up.

We are also planning to build a 32km pipeline from Glass to Ncema station. When we do that it is going to change the water situation, not overnight, but it’s going to take two years to build.

We all need to be patient. Gwayi-Shangani is fine, but it is long term and to build that 257km pipeline to Bulawayo needs a lot of money, it costs a very small amount to build Glass Block Dam.

More: Pindula News