Currently there are more than eighty countries, with forty percent of the world’s population, are already facing water shortages. Over one billion people lack safe water, and three billion lack sanitation; eighty per cent of infectious diseases are waterborne, killing millions of children each year.

Acid mine drainage (AMD) or acid rock drainage (ARD), refers to the outflow of acidic water from (usually abandoned) metal mines or coal mines. Acid mine drainage is the formation and movement of highly acidic water rich in heavy metals. This acidic water forms through the chemical reaction of surface water (rainwater, snowmelt, pond water) and shallow subsurface water with rocks that contain sulfur-bearing minerals, resulting in sulfuric acid. Heavy metals can be leached from rocks that come in contact with the acid, a process that may be substantially enhanced by bacterial action. The resulting fluids is a highly toxic! And when mixed with groundwater, surface water and soil, may have harmful effects on humans, animals and plants. In addition to the acid contribution to surface waters, AMD may cause metals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper, silver, and zinc to leach from mine wastes and significantly lowers the pH of the water. Thus, AMD is the mining industry’s greatest environmental problem and its greatest liability, an acid-generating mine has the potential for long-term devastating impacts on the planet’s ecosystem, an ”irreversible pollution machine”. Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is currently one of the world’s biggest environmental threats!

In USA alone, according to the Forest Service: In the eastern part, more than 7,000 kilometers of streams are affected by acid drainage from coal mines (Kim et al. 1982). In the western U.S., the Forest Service estimates that between 20,000 and 50,000 mines are currently generating acid on Forest Service lands, and that drainage from these mines is impacting between 8,000 and 16,000 kilometers of streams (U.S. Forest Service 1993).

JOHANNESBURG, in the Witwatersrand gold fields area operated by BHP Billiton, an Australian mining company and with a major management office in London, UK. It is estimated that some 60-million liters of polluted AMD water could pour out into the western, central, and eastern basins, and impacting on the Vaal and Crocodile River systems, (report, 2011).