Water Management Practice in Mining, Phu Kham Cu-Au, Lao PDR

Phu Kham Mining (PKM) is one of the two largest mining industries in Laos. The exploration was started since 1994, Gold Plant started during mid-year of 2005 and Copper-Gold plant started on 2007. The study's aims to evaluate surface water quality and determine existing water management practices at PKM based on current environmental management system. The study found that the major environmental problems are sediment and erosion impact on surface water quality. The field measurements result that sometime the turbidity stay more than one week at high level approximately 300 to 500 NTUs. For the chemical parameters almost all comply with the standard only a sample taken during mid-May 2008 at downstream Gold Plant (SW2) and analyzed by ALS Hong Kong has the result come up with copper concentration in water is 734micro grams per liters vs standard 0.5mg/L. Refer to the results of the study, there are highly recommend that the top manager and environmental manager shall consider land clearance permit, topsoil management, and erosion and sediment control practices due to turbidity much different from upstream and downstream of the construction site.