On 27 July 2026, the Water Tribunal handed down judgment in Canyon Resources (Pty) Ltd v Chief Director: Water Use Licensing Management, Department of Water and Sanitation and Others (WT02/25/MP), upholding an appeal against the Department of Water and Sanitation’s (DWS) refusal of an integrated water use licence (IWUL) for a proposed coal mine near Middelburg, Mpumalanga. The DWS had refused the application solely because the affected landowner had not signed a consent form confirming agreement to the proposed water use activities on his property. The Tribunal found that refusal was unlawful, holding that neither the National Water Act 36 of 1998 (NWA) nor its regulations make landowner consent a prerequisite for a water use licensing authority to consider, and grant, a water use licence.

For environmental and mining practitioners, the judgment is significant well beyond its facts. It draws a firm line between the technical, resource-based enquiry that the NWA requires a licensing authority to conduct, and the separate, private-law question of a mining right holder’s access to land, and confirms that the latter cannot be used to defeat the former.

Background

Canyon Resources (Pty) Ltd, a coal exploration, mining and processing company, applied for a mining right under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002 (MPRDA) for the proposed Driefontein Mine, together with environmental authorisation under the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 and a waste licence under the National Environmental Management: Waste Act 59 of 2008. The mine also required an IWUL under section 40 of the NWA for water uses under section 21(a), (b), (i), (f), (g) and (j).

Following a pre-application enquiry in 2022 and public participation conducted under both the MPRDA and NEMA, during which the affected landowners were informed of the application, the IWUL application was accepted for processing in September 2023. Despite technical support from the DWS’s own groundwater section, subject to a volumetric limit, the application was refused in February 2025 on a single ground: the landowner had not signed the DW902 form recording consent to the water use activities on his property, despite repeated requests over more than a year.

Why This Matters For Environmental Licensing

Integrated water use licensing exists to ensure that water uses associated with mining, abstraction, stream flow reduction, discharge and disposal among them, are assessed against the resource quality objectives, availability and ecological Reserve of the catchment in question. That assessment is meant to be a technical and environmental one, conducted by hydrogeologists, resource quality specialists and the DWS’s own sub-directorates, culminating in a Record of Recommendation (ROR).

In Canyon Resources, that technical process had already run its course, and had produced a broadly favourable outcome, before the application was refused on an entirely separate, administrative basis. The Tribunal’s judgment is, in that sense, a caution against allowing a collateral land access dispute to override a licensing decision that is supposed to turn on resource protection and environmental merit.

The Tribunal’s Key Findings

Several findings in the judgment are of direct application to future licensing disputes –

• The water use licensing test is separate from the land access question: sections 40 and 41 of the NWA, and the Water Use Licence Application and Appeals Regulations, 2017, do not make landowner consent, whether recorded on a DW902 form or otherwise, a prerequisite for a responsible authority to consider a water use licence application. The Tribunal found that Annexure C to the Regulations, on which the DWS relied, was a checklist rather than a source of a substantive statutory requirement;
• Refusing to consider the merits because of an unsigned consent form was unlawful: the Tribunal held that the DWS acted contrary to the Regulations by refusing to engage with the substance of the application, including the supportive technical recommendations already on record, purely because of the absence of the landowner’s signature;
• Land access has its own dedicated statutory remedy, engaged after authorisation: the NWA’s servitude regime, sections 126 to 131, allows a person authorised to use water to claim a servitude of abutment, aqueduct or submersion, with compensation determined by a competent court if agreement cannot be reached. Section 54 of the MPRDA provides a parallel Regional Manager-led process for resolving disputes over a mining right holder’s access to land. The Tribunal confirmed these are the correct mechanisms for resolving land access disputes, and that they are engaged once a water use is authorised, not as a gatekeeping condition before authorisation;
• Public participation and individual consent are distinct concepts: the Tribunal noted that the affected landowners had participated in the public participation process conducted under the MPRDA and NEMA and had not objected to the application at that stage. That participation satisfied the consultation function of the process, even though the same landowner subsequently declined to sign an individual consent form; and
• Integrated licensing timeframes cannot be indefinitely stalled by a collateral dispute: because the IWUL was linked to the MPRDA mining right and NEMA environmental authorisation processes, and section 41(5) of the NWA requires the water use licensing process to be aligned and integrated with those timeframes, the Tribunal found it appropriate to grant the licence and leave the land access question to be resolved separately, rather than allow it to hold the entire integrated authorisation hostage.

Environmental Compliance And Licensing Implications

The judgment carries practical consequences for mining right holders, water users and their advisors –

• Technical and environmental merit is, and should remain, the substantive test: applicants should ensure that hydrogeological assessments, water balance modelling and resource quality studies supporting an IWUL application are robust and well-documented, since the judgment confirms that this is the evidence a licensing authority is meant to weigh, not administrative form compliance unrelated to resource impact;
• A granted IWUL does not resolve land access: obtaining a water use licence is a necessary but not sufficient step where the licence holder does not own the land on which the water use will occur. Proponents should build a parallel land access strategy, negotiation, servitude registration, or, where necessary, High Court proceedings under sections 126 to 131 of the NWA or the section 54 MPRDA process, into project planning from the outset, rather than treating it as an afterthought to licensing;
• Applicants facing a similar consent-based refusal have a clear basis to appeal: operators whose IWUL or WUL applications have been refused, or are being delayed, solely for want of a signed landowner consent form, notwithstanding supportive technical findings, now have Tribunal authority directly on point to challenge that approach;
• Regulatory timeframes remain a live compliance issue: Regulation 3(6) requires a water use licence application to be processed within 300 days; the roughly three-year period between application and refusal in this matter illustrates the practical gap between the prescribed timeframe and DWS processing capacity, reinforcing the value of proactive engagement and, where necessary, escalation; and
• Meaningful landowner engagement remains good practice, even where not a legal precondition: while the judgment confirms that consent is not a licensing prerequisite, proponents should not treat that as licence to disengage from landowners. Early, well-documented engagement reduces the likelihood of a subsequent servitude dispute and supports the broader social licence to operate that any mining project ultimately depends on.

Practical Steps

Mining right holders and water users should consider –

• reviewing any pending or previously refused WUL or IWUL applications for signs that a licensing authority has treated landowner consent, rather than technical merit, as determinative, and assessing the prospects of an appeal to the Water Tribunal;
• developing a land access and servitude strategy in parallel with, not after, the water use licensing process, including early engagement with affected landowners and, where necessary, preparation for a section 126 to 131 NWA servitude claim or a section 54 MPRDA access dispute;
• ensuring hydrogeological, water balance and resource quality studies supporting a licence application are complete and defensible before submission, given that this evidence is what a licensing authority and, on appeal, the Tribunal will treat as substantive;
• monitoring IWUL and WUL application timelines against the prescribed 300-day period and escalating unreasonable delay; and
• maintaining thorough documentation of public participation and landowner engagement conducted under the MPRDA and NEMA, which the Tribunal treated as relevant even where individual consent was not obtained.

Conclusion

Canyon Resources gives mining right holders and water users a clear, Tribunal-endorsed answer to a recurring administrative obstacle: a licensing authority may not refuse to engage with the technical and environmental merits of a water use licence application simply because a landowner has not signed a consent form. That confirmation protects the integrity of the resource-based enquiry the NWA is designed to conduct, while leaving land access disputes to the separate statutory mechanisms built for that purpose. Proponents should treat the judgment as confirmation that the substance of their environmental and technical case, not administrative form compliance, is what will ultimately determine their licensing outcome, while continuing to manage land access as a distinct, parallel workstream.

How LexEco Can Assist

LexEco advises mining right holders, water users and landowners on integrated water use licensing and related land access disputes, including:

• preparing and appealing water use and integrated water use licence applications to the Water Tribunal, including challenging refusals based on administrative rather than technical grounds;
• structuring land access strategies under sections 126 to 131 of the NWA and section 54 of the MPRDA, including servitude negotiation, registration and, where required, High Court proceedings;
• reviewing and strengthening the technical case, hydrogeological, water balance and resource quality evidence, underpinning water use licence applications;
• advising on the integration of MPRDA, NEMA and NWA authorisation timeframes for mining projects requiring multiple concurrent approvals; and
• structuring public participation and landowner engagement processes that support both regulatory compliance and a durable social licence to operate.

Where a water use licence application has stalled or been refused over unresolved land access issues, the Canyon Resources judgment may offer a clear path forward. Contact LexEco to discuss your water use licensing and land access position.