Ghana’s top water utility shut down the treatment plant that serves its biggest mining hub following a surge in illegal gold mining that’s polluted the river that supplies the facility.
Ghana Water Co. last week shuttered the plant that produces 75% of potable water for Tarkwa and its neighboring areas in the country’s west “due to massive galamsey activities on River Bonsa,” it said Tuesday, using a local term for illegal gold mining.
Surging gold prices have spurred an illicit rush in Africa’s biggest producer of the metal, enabled by lax regulations. Major operators such as the AngloGold Ashanti Plc, Gold Fields Ltd. and Newmont Corp run large-scale operations in Ghana, but it’s the largely informal, small-scale gold-mining sector that authorities blame for the environmental damage.
The ecological burden became a campaign issue in the run-up to Dec. 7 elections that unseated the incumbent administration at the constituency and national levels. Ghana is inaugurating its new president, John Mahama, later Tuesday.
