Technological impact of placer gold mine on water quality: Case of Tuul river valley in the Zaamar Goldfield, Mongolia

The paper finds that placer gold mining operation has significant impact on the surface water quality, which varies from mine to mine depending on the types of gold recovery technologies applied. Only primitive gold recovery technologies are dominating in the Zaamar goldfield. We assume that the mines with foreign ownership have cleaner technologies with less impact on the water quality than the local ones. But results from the field study show that mines with joint ownerships of Russian or Chinese companies in Zaamar area have more polluting technologies than the local smaller companies. However the results from the empirical analysis support our assumption and show that domestic owned mines have more impact on the water quality than the mines jointly owned with Russian or Chinese companies since they dominantly uses primitive technologies to recover the gold.