Turkish gold mining and monitoring in Ovacik gold-silver mine

Recently several national and international companies explored for gold deposits in some regions of Turkey. In these searching activities, they discovered nine economically viable gold deposits with reserves ranging from 7 to 245 tons of gold metal. Turkey has started an important era related to the first serious gold mining and environmental protection along with the gold-silver mine located in Ovacik, which is epithermal type and has an economical value in 1989. Turkey produced its first gold bar in May 2001 utilizing cyanide & CIP process, after 12 years of permitting procedures and numerous court cases. For the Ovacik gold-silver mine, during two years period average cyanide concentration in samples taken from tailings discharge was 0.1 ppm (HCN) and in the tailings pond were measured as below 1 ppm (CNWAD).