hankyoreh

South Gyeongsang Province

As the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project has begun in earnest, the Hankyoreh together with civic groups plans to conduct joint monitoring of the environmental destruction caused by the project’s construction process. This joint monitoring will be carried out together with religious environmental groups including Buddhist Environmental Solidarity, Korea Christian Environmental Movement Solidarity for Integrity of Creation and the Catholic Alliance to Stop the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project, and environmental groups in the regions affected by the project including the Society for the Study of Rivers, Citizens Institute for Environmental Studies and the Gyeongnam Headquarters to Block the Four Rivers Restoration and Protect the Nakdong River. The destruction to be monitored includes sediment pollution, water extraction and filtration problems and ecological destruction. In addition, we also plan to present policy alternatives. We begin by publishing a series of interviews to share the opinions of leading figures from the groups participating in the joint monitoring project. -The editor.

Kwandong University Civil Engineering Professor Park Chang-geun, head of Citizens’ Institute for Environmental Studies, says that if the Lee Myung-bak administration continues to push forward with the Four Rivers project in its current manner, it will cause irreparable harm to the environment and water quality pollution. Professor Park says even if only now, the construction must be suspended and the project rediscussed from the very beginning. In particular, he points out that the Lee administration’s decision to feign ignorance about these concerns being raised by experts is due to President Lee’s intention to complete the initial stage of his Grand Korean Waterway project within his term in office.

Founded in 1993, the Citizens Institute for Environmental Studies (CIES) models itself on the Korea Pollution Research Institute, the site of origin of the South Korean environmental movement founded in 1982. It is a specialized civic group with eight research centers around the country studying environmental issues.

In an interview with the Hankyoreh on Sunday, Park said the grounds cited by the Lee administration for pushing the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project, which are to protect from water shortages, deteriorating water quality and flood damages, are all groundless claims.

In regards to the water shortage issue, a core reason cited for pushing the project, Park says the Lee administration claims South Korea has been designated a water shortage nation by the UN, but the UN has never issued such an opinion. Moreover, the scale of the water shortage cited by the ‘National Water Resources Plan Update’ published by the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, cited by the administration as grounds for its water shortage claims, used as its basis the most severe drought year in 37 years. In contrast to the Lee administration’s claims, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs and Korea Water Resources Corporation reported in 2006 that South Korea has not suffered a water shortage for the past 40 years.

In response to the administration’s claims that water quality in rivers has deteriorated, Park says that 65 percent of the main streams of the four rivers received first class ratings in biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), the amount of dissolved oxygen used by microorganisms in the biological process of metabolizing organic matter in water. The areas with serious pollution problems, in fact, are the river’s tributaries. Park says it is common sense that if you build a dam, water becomes polluted, and in fact, the level of pollution in water trapped behind weirs and dams such as the Singok and Jamsil Weirs on the Han River and estuary dam on the Nakdong River is quite serious. To the contrary, after the weirs were removed form the Taehwa River in Ulsan and the Gongneungcheon Stream in Goyang, the water became cleaner. He said in the case of the Gongneungcheon, its water quality indexes such as the BOD improved by a factor of three or four after the weirs were removed.

Despite this, the Lee administration is saying it will solve the issue of water quality of stagnant water by investing some 250 billion Won ($220 million USD) following indiscriminate weir construction. Park says this is inefficient, and no different from giving someone a disease and medicine for its cure at the same time. Park also says that the solution is simple, the administration should simply not spend a fortune to build weirs, and he does not understand why the administration is looking to allocate trillions of Won unnecessarily to improve water quality.

In response to the Lee administration’s claims about preventing flood damage, Park also says the main streams of the four rivers account for just 3.4 percent of the flood damage that occurs in South Korea, and that most of the damage occurs in mountain valleys and tributaries.

Park also stated that the Lee administration is making these forced claims while it goes about building weirs on the four rivers and digging six meters into the riverbed. He says if you move such a mass of earth by dredging along the rivers, an irreversible aftermath of ecological destruction and water quality pollution from pollutants and floating matter would result. Park also said if the 330 km stretch of the Nakdongg River from Busan to Andong were dredged at an average depth of 6 m, some 440 million cubic meters of sand would be produced, enough to build 15-story apartments along the entire length of the Seoul-Busan highway. He says it would take 150 to 200 years for that much sand to reaccumulate at the bottom of the Nakdong River.

Additionally, Park also says since the Lee administration is proceeding unilaterally with the project without thorough consideration for these grave issues, experts such as the Society for the Study of Rivers are continuing their criticism. Rather than listening to these opinions, however, the administration is accusing experts critical of the project of opposing it simply for the sake of opposition. He added that while many experts are maintaining their silence for a number of reasons, all agree that there are huge problems with the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project.

As for the reason why the Lee administration is so unreasonably pushing the project through, Park suggests that President Lee Myung-bak might be trying to lay the foundation for his previously rejected Grand Korean Waterway project during his term. He says the Lee administration, despite saying it would lower the height of the Haman Weir on the Nakdong River by 2.5 m out of flood damage concerns, has in fact changed its plan to dig 2.5m deeper into the Haman area riverbed. This would seem to be in order to maintain the 6 m depth needed for ships to pass. The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs has said in its promotional material for the Grand Korean Waterway that in order for ships to pass, the water depth needs to be at least six meters.

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