Mine and Quarry Operators Must Be Licensed – WRA

The Water Resources Authority (WRA) is reminding mine and quarry operators to secure their licences for legitimate access to rivers and quarries for aggregate excavation.

Mining of aggregates is a legal, legitimate business in Jamaica. However, when done in breach of established regulations, unsustainable and illicit mining practices can reconfigure rivers, destroy riverbanks and cause excess erosion.

Managing Director of the WRA, Peter Clarke, who was speaking in a recent interview with JIS News, said applications for licences must be made at the Mines and Geology Division.

“For you to be legal and legitimate, it means that you must have a mining or quarry licence. When you apply …to mine aggregate, whether sand, stone or large boulders, and you have that licence, then you’re going to be operating, excavating and removing the aggregate in a manner that is sanctioned,” he said.

The WRA works closely with key stakeholders in the granting of mining licences. Mr. Clarke explained that there are restrictions on how much can be mined ,which help with managing the sector and the natural resources.

“So, what it means is that there will be restrictions on how deep you can make your cuts within the river and how much you can extend the riverbank or not. Now, when it becomes a problem is if somebody contravenes the terms of their mining licence, or if somebody just goes willy-nilly and starts mining,” he pointed out.

Improper mining practices could jeopardise the housing in nearby communities and removing too much aggregate could cause damaging erosion.

As such, restrictions have been put in place that specify the rivers that are minable and the extent to which they can be mind.

“The main thing that will happen is that if you get down to that level [of earth], the river would have lost some of the ability to protect itself, and then you have more erosion. This would mean that you’ll now have deeper gorges in the river, and you are also moving more sediment and those are two things you do not want to have,” Mr. Clarke pointed out.

On the matter of individuals taking sand or aggregates from rivers for personal projects, the WRA Head told JIS News that “the aggregate that is being moved is infinitesimal compared to the overall situation.”

“It’s not absolutely critical and that is why you see that it happens without much of a concern by the major authorities. The major concern is when you have heavy equipment moving material; tractors moving cubic meters or yards and yards of material. It is not uncommon for where rivers pass through communities and somebody’s going to be building that they will move some sand. They themselves don’t want dirt, so they don’t carry it down to that level,” he pointed out.

“The second thing that happens is that by the next rainfall, because of how accretion and erosion takes place, some amount of rejuvenated accretion takes place and people just wait for the next rainfall again to get a little bit more sand,” he said.