Four rivers project

Four rivers project (4대강 정비사업/四大江整備事業) refers to President Lee Myung-bak's ambitious project aiming to restore Korea's major waterways covering 634 km of rivers and tributaries. During the Presidential election campaign in 2007, encouraged by the successful restoration of Chongye Creek in downtown Seoul, Presidential candidate Lee of the Grand Nation Party proposed that the Han, Nakdong, Yeongsan and Geum rivers should be restored if he will be elected as President.

As pledged, President Lee pursued to construct four river waterways, but faced with the nationwide opposition, he had to downsize it to a mere restoration project. The blueprint of the project was implemented at 95 different sections simultaneously and with a 2012 deadline. The construction cost amounted to 22.2 trillion won.

Key words
four rivers project, waterway project, budget constraint, dam, flood

Initiation of the Project
When the Nakdong and Yeongsan rivers suffered from flooding during typhoon Rusa in 2002 and Maemi in 2003, it was believed that flood damage could be reduced by dredging them. When Korea built dams on the Nakdong River in the mid 1980s, the structure was made to withstand 18,000㎥ of water passing through per second, to be prepared against the worst flooding that can occur only once every 500 years.

Dams built for the project, however, were designed to withstand floods that can occur every 200 years, equivalent to 23,000㎥ of waters per second. The Nakdong River was so low that a person could walk across it in the dry season. The Yeongsan River used to virtually dry up because people in the upper tributaries siphoned the water off as tap water and for irrigation.

So creating dams and riverbed sills was believed to greatly help the collection of water. Polluted silt that came from factories between the 1960s and 80s were collecting on riverbeds. Farming on the sides of rivers also impeded efforts to boost the water quality.

Purpose of the Project
According to the government, the purpose of the four major rivers restoration project was:
 * To secure abundant water resources to mitigate water scarcity
 * To Implement comprehensive flood control measures
 * To improve water quality and resore the ecosystem
 * To create multipurpose spaces for local residents
 * To develop regions centered on rivers.

Statutory ground
The four major rivers project has not been conducted by a single act but several individual acts including the River Act (하천법), the Framework Act on Environmental Policy (환경정책기본법), the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (환경영향평가법) and generally the National Finance Act (국가재정법). Some critics argued that the implementation of the project was not procedurally in conformity with relevant laws.

Criticism and Opposition
The four rivers project has been a massive national reform effort that cost more than 22 trillion won (US$1=W1,100). It would have been better if the government had been more meticulous in the way it has pursued the project so far. It should have planned the project more carefully, conducted simulations, experimented with it on a small scale, applied it to one river first, rectified problems and then moved on with the entire construction.

The government must be very open to criticism about any project unless it is politically motivated to undermine the whole plan. That is the only way debate will remain objective and free of political bias. If it is discovered that the riverbed sills could cause the water to submerge surrounding lowlands, then they need to be lowered. Quick changes are needed to address concerns that the digging would damage fragile ecosystems and hurt endangered species by muddying the waters.

The planners must also avoid creating monotonous riverways plastered with concrete, so that they do not suffer serious flood damage. And care must be taken to retain the unique cultural and historical attributes of each region along the riverways.

To ensure these conditions, the government should not be obsessed with the 2012 deadline. Even though construction begins simultaneously on the different sections, some parts could be finished by 2012 and others by 2014 depending on their geographical and ecological conditions. Even if the project is not finished by 2012 yet eventually succeeds in reviving the country's rivers, the credit will still go to the Lee Myung-bak administration.

Inter-Governmental Dispute over the Project
President Lee’s project to restore and revamp the country’s four major rivers has proved to be a colossal failure in terms of safety and water standards, according to a Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) finding disclosed on January 17, 2013. The announcement put the pork-barrel project in a completely different light after the government spent so much time championing it. It also raised questions about the validity of the findings due to the sensitive timing of the release amid a power transition.

The BAI pointed to the shoddy design of irrigation waterways at a number of reservoirs around the four rivers, which have caused land erosion. Some are already showing fissures, raising safety alarms. The BAI also drew attention to poor water management because the authorities measured contamination levels based not on a broad scale of pollutants, which should have included chemical oxygen demand, but simply by testing the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) usually used on common wastewater streams.

The Ministry of Land, Transportation and Maritime Affairs and the Ministry of Environment defended the project immediately after the BAI disclosure. They insisted there are no problems regarding the irrigation canals either in terms of safety or function. It also said the government has already redressed or plans to address the problems the board has raised. Meanwhile, the Environment Ministry said the initial testing of the water in the four rivers was aimed at measuring the BOD of biodegradable pollutants, adding that it plans to come up with comprehensive measures to improve the water quality after a long-term evaluation.

Despite ongoing disputes, however, the four rivers are flowing into the sea like a last train home.