The Four Major Rivers Restoration Project is the biggest project ever on water control as well as cleaning work on national lands. The collected garbage during the Project by now exceeded one million tons. By removing old-pending fluvial wastes, flowering plants and trees start to shift over bleak place into vitality.
March 15, 2011, the second floor controlling room of underwater dredger deployed in Zone 17 of the Nakdong. The pressure gauge needle indicating air-intake started to fluctuate. Something must have been stuck. The pilot lowered the power with stiff look on his face. A little later, he turned on the crane switch. The inlet port revealed itself out of surface. It was a wasted tire. The inlet port has spiral nap cutters which look like shark teeth. They play an essential part in stirring and crushing up stiff sediments on the river bed. By the way, an abrupt appearance of waste tire put the work backs a while. After removing it, river bed cleaning work seemed to go smoothly until we encounter another unwelcome guest. It was a big lump of vinyl waste. It looked like a big cloud of cotton. Average 5 hours a day, dredgers fight with these wasteful collateral works of hide-and-seek with wastes on bottom of river bed, out of 20 operating hours in a day. Except the fact that is not new ones, the wastes from the bottom of river looked like wide range of products, for instance, fishing net, vinyl, tires, steel beam, electronics, toxic drum, and so forth. It is bigger problem than we think, because most of them are invisible from our sight in ordinary time. Chemical drums and pesticides bottles might have gradually contaminants flowed into drinking water source.
Illegal throwing on river, not trash but our conscience
The underwater garbage was not alone. When we probed a wetland reservation located in lower area from the construction site of Gumi Weir (Wolgok-ro, Haepyeong-myeon, Gumi City, Gyeongbuk Province) on late February 2011. Nevertheless some parts around construction site of weir were changed; the wetland reserve was retaining existing shape and condition.
A flock of migratory birds suddenly soared from rustling sound. On the place where birds just got left, there were PET bottles, boxes and sundry other garbage. Fluttering in the wind, vinyl was making the place into dismal atmosphere. It looked fine in distance, but the wetland was struggling with wastes indiscreetly thrown by people. The wastes which are found in riverside vary in its distribution and category. In rural area, mainly agricultural wastes were found. Near urban area, household garbage made up the bulk of it. Refrigerator, wardrobe, chair, table, half-burnt electric fan, old-fashioned television and food waste: it was too much to enumerate. Empty can or bottle of soju (Korean distilled liquor) is rather close to a piece of cake. The sector of riverside enhancement construction on Gulam district and Gangcheon-ri (Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province) showed well-arranged heap of waste tires and miscellaneous garbage aside by frenetic excavators and trucks. The sites of dredging and river enhancement on Zone 2 and Zone 3, close to the Paldang Lake, show outpouring of wastes dredged from underwater. Along the riverside, various wastes are found wherever there is esplanade, sandbar or else.
In early times, cleaning waste was unavoidable
At the beginning of the project, trucks were busy with convey the wastes instead of dredged soil. Though hundred thousand tons of wastes dredged from the river bed were disposed of up until now sporadically nationwide, the whole amount of wastes collected from the four major rivers is estimated at more than 2 million ton (1.6M ton of construction waste, 0.26M ton of mixed waste and landfill waste of 1.15 M ton). Synthetic resins went over 9000 ton and ‘special treatment-needed’ wastes including slate also seem to be close to 5000 ton. The actual amount can increase as the project goes further
Amid cleaning work was making a big scene on the four major rivers, the thing most noteworthy was the contaminated soil illegally landfilled long before. There was no two ways about it. It was incidentally found during the project. Different from first estimation of hundred thousand tons, fortunately actual amount is calculated as about 110,000 ton.
This landfill soil can be called as the miniature for aggregate amount of waste from the four major rivers. Illicitness’s of local dealers, widespread ignorance of the persons concerned to land affairs and their impudence with a litany of mismanagement by some municipalities; all those things are responsible for illegal waste landfill around riparian areas. Because of this waste-full landfill soil, the Zone 8 of the Nakdong is busy to dispose of the wastes cleaning work with hardly coping with main restoration works. As of April, the schedule is four months late.
On the renewed riverside, cherry trees and pussy willows await spring
During weirs construction works are running close to completion and river enhancement works indicate over the half of the progress schedule, around the construction yards hundred thousand of garbage were collected. The rivers are finding their genuine faces as like being washed off.
The Hwamyeong district of the Nakdong was, covered by heap of garbage, a bleak place deserted from appropriate management. But, now it completely transformed as clean eco-park beloved by residents. In recent days, otters were found in Wetland Park. Meanwhile, Zone 5 of the Geum River in Buyeo City, Chungnam Province, had cleaned wastes from the esplanades and had done over with nettle trees, cherry trees and various bushes, waiting for verdure of spring.
Thousands of forest trees and shrubberies were settled in Dangnam district near the Ipo Weir of the Zone 3 (on the Han River) instead of previous sediments and wastes on the esplanade. If it was not the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project, an ocean of wastes might be emitting contaminants from the bottom of the rivers even now. This project will find a significant place in history.
Thousands of forest trees and shrubberies were settled in Dangnam district near the Ipo Weir of the Zone 3 (on the Han River) instead of previous sediments and wastes on the esplanade. If it was not the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project, an ocean of wastes might be emitting contaminants from the bottom of the rivers even now. This project will find a significant place in history.
