JOURNAL PAPER

Surface drainage around the Venetia pit

C. Mwapaura

University of Johannesburg, South Africa

SYNOPSIS

Venetia is an open pit, truck and shovel operation owned by De Beers South Africa and situated in the northern part of South Africa in the Limpopo province. The kimberlite body was discovered in 1980 and full production started in 1992. The mine is currently mining the fourth cut of the open pit and plans are in place to ake the mine underground by 2014 employing a block cave mining method.
This project was initiated because of a lack of a drainage system that prevents stormwater from reporting into the open pit during the rainy seasons. The project had been attempted before without much success and the problem in question is escalated by an ever expanding pit.

“Full text available only in PDF format”

References

SIM, M.J. and MORRIS, M.J. Flood assessments along various rivers in the vicinity of Venetia Mine, SRK project number 374979, Compiled.         [ Links ]

SHEPHERD, P.J. Review of stormwater entering the Venetia pit, water management and recommended water controls, KLM report No.285056/1.         [ Links ]

MORTON, K.L. and MULLER, S. Hydrogeologies of Venetia diamond mine, KLM.         [ Links ]

Dewatering of the open pits at Letlhakane and Orapa diamond mines, Botswana R.J. Connelly, J. Gibson, Steffen, Robertson and Kirsten Inc.         [ Links ]

Paper written on project work carried out in partial fulfilment of B. Tech. (Min. Eng.) degree