As the sign says this water is not fit for drinking or swimming. Only a solitary gull braves the polluted waters. But the problem isn t confined to the waters of the lake. When it rains here in Tudor Shaft a Johannesburg township named after the nearby mine shaft the streets pool with orange water that smells of vinegar. It s seeping from abandoned mines. Locals say the water is contaminated with radioactive minerals used in the mining process and has wiped out all aquatic life in a nearby river. Increasingly South Africans are worried about the risks contaminated water from mining poses to the rest of Johannesburg built over one of the largest gold mining bases in the world. The environmental cost of South Africa s lucrative export is weighing on impoverished communities many sitting on abandoned mines on the outskirts of the city. And wealthy mining companies have shown little inclination to take responsibility. A man stirs lunch - cornmeal porridge - in an immaculate shack. The small front yard is lined with pebbles covering the soil. Outside in the yard children run barefoot their feet tinted orange. 35-year-old Patrick Mkoyo says his children sometimes come home with rashes or difficulty breathing. They are not OK here but I don t have a choice I have no other place to stay he says. I m worried about my children. He says his doctors say they don t know what is causing the medical problems. In December Professor Chris Busby from Ireland s University of Ulster tested the soil around Mkoyo s shack and found it contained at least 32 times the amount of government-set acceptable radioactivity levels. Busby prepared the report for Johannesburg-based Federation for Sustainable Environment a private group working to bring the toxic water issue to the attention of the government and its citizens. The dangerous mining residue reaches people in two steps To reach the precious minerals at the bottom of a mining basin - a bowl containing water and minerals - miners pump out the water. Gold is then extracted and the remaining rock which contains traces of uranium is dumped onto waste piles. Over time the uranium reacts with oxygen from the atmosphere and this radioactive substance builds according to mineral geochemistry professors at Johannesburg s University of Witwatersrand. Once mining is finished rainwater accumulates in abandoned mine dumps eventually causing mining basins - huge bowls in the earth containing water and minerals - to overflow flushing the uranium and other substances into the ground and river systems. One mining basin in western Johannesburg has already flooded and one of the next basins to flood experts say will be under Johannesburg s city centre. Toxic mine water is entering rivers and communities at an increasing rate particularly with heavy rain in recent months and its consequences are devastating says Mariette Liefferink chief executive of the Federation for Sustainable Environment. These commu

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