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Published online 19 March 2008 |
Nature
| doi:10.1038/news.2008.679
Corrected online: 25 March 2008
News
Korean waterway project gathers opposition
Flood of complaints hits ambitious canal plan.
The South Korean president’s plan to tie together the county’s main waterways is riling scientists, economists and environmentalists at home and abroad.
President Myung-bak Lee, who assumed office on 25 February, has been pressing forward with plans for a ‘Grand Korean Waterway’, an ambitious plan to link all the country’s major rivers by canals.
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I would like to comment on your well respected magazine’s ‘News’ section, published online on 19 March 2008, entitled ‘Korean waterway project gathers opposition’. I believe the news article totally missed the essence of the waterway project, and only reflected gossipy opinions surrounding politics. I am afraid that the article misinformed environmental and economical impact of the project. As a scholar who have been researching and following upon this topic for the last 20 years, I hope you let the public hear the other side of the story. I believe that the article failed to balance between the pros and cons, providing readers biased information. For example, the article only referenced the President Lee’s website, without any single counter-interview against the comments made by opposing scholars. In addition, the article did not even have thorough background check on the facts regarding the project. To be more specific, aggregated amounts of the sediments accumulated in the river systems in the peninsula, is estimated to be 7 billion cubic meters, causing seasonal flood in the region annually. More than 1,300 people lost their lives and financial loss amounts to more than 46 billion dollars during the past 10 years. The President Lee’s proposal to remove the sediments in the process of constructing inland waterway makes sense since these sediments, at the current accumulation rate, will certainly cause more environmental problems than benefits. Beside that, sale of the sand and gravels will provide financial means to build the inland waterway system. The economic benefit of the project has been underestimated as well. For example, the current trucking cost between Seoul-Busan already exceeds shipping cost between Busan-Los Angeles route. To make the matters worse, the Seoul-Busan route, including the existing railroad system, is already saturated to the point that imputed cost of traffic congestion amounts to over 24 billion dollars And more than 20 billion dollars have been spent already to improve the water quality of two river system without any significant result. In addition, the sands and gravels excavated from the river system can be used for construction industries (annual demand of 3 billion dollars currently), replacing a great portion of the current source of sand and gravel supply (from excavating seashore and blasting rock mountains, which proven to be more hazardous to the environment). The ingenuity of the plan is to use the funds from the sale of the excavated sands and gravels to cover the project expenses. The waterway plan also cleverly utilizes the existing dams (ChoongJoo dam, located in the highest point of the planned inland waterway, was completed in 1985 thus making the canal system possible) to minimize the unnecessary excavation and its environmental impact, further reducing associated reimbursement costs. It is important to inform you that the project was NOT conceived by some group of politicians in one day. The conception of the project is dated back to the early 90’s based on the rigorous scientific and economical evaluations by independent group of scientists at the Sejong Research Institution. Indeed, there have been numerous occasions of open-symposium and literature publication for past twenty years. Therefore, any specialists and general public have had enough time to group their opinions and publish them. I believe their silence in the past does not justify their demands for the re-evaluation of the project. In spite of the historical background of the project, the news article, as it stands, appears to wrap the project with political controversies, diminishing the beneficial economic and environmental impact as well as the necessity to resolve the geo-climatic problems of the regions. And as a result of this biased article, I am afraid of, many voters are misguided in coming election on the 9th of April. Thus I sincerely hope your respected magazine straighten things out before it is too late. We are more than happy to provide more correct information if you require one. Without lopsided and opinionated interviews, the original intention of the article – how to deal with water on earth – will be preserved. Of course, continuous and independent vigilance and evaluation on the project progress should follow to make the project viable and environment-friendly. Sincerely yours, Director, Sejong Research Institution Myunggun Choo
I was disappointed with the one-sided coverage of the Korean Waterway Project at the most critical time in Korea with the general election on April 9, 2008. The project has been unfortunately handled as a matter of politics and not as one of science or engineering. The claims made by opposition groups were mostly unsupported with facts. Furthermore, I do not think that the people interviewed in the article, who are mostly junior researchers or even Ph.D. students, have not studied the effects of waterways on the environmental thoroughly but have highly biased opinions based on inexperienced intuition. I am also questioning the real intention and accuracy of this article. The environmental disaster claimed by opposition groups has been proven to be false as demonstrated in the Gabcikovo project and other similar projects throughout the world. The Korean rivers will be modified to control flooding, create wetlands, provide wildlife habit, and use as a waterway like the Mississippi river which is relatively undisturbed compared to European rivers that are used as waterways. I request that you write another cover story on Korean waterways by interviewing real experts who are not motivated by political causes as soon as possible. In short, most claims made by your interviewers and opposition groups are unrelated, unsupported, misunderstood, and/or wrong scientifically. It is a shame that ‘Nature’ issued this kind of one-sided, politically motivated, untimely, insensitive, and inaccurate article with no firm scientific facts. Jae K. (Jim) Park, Professor in Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with over 30 years of experience working worldwide and the past president of the Korean Environmental Professionals Association in America (KEPAA).
I believe what is made by God is the best.We shoud just enjoy it and not altering it whatever posible.