Pollution of the Nakdong River, which is one of the two industrial arteries of Korea, is not recent problem. Its reason is slow flow of the Nakdong River. From the origin in Taebaek,Gangwon, to Eulsuk Island in Busan, the 500km-long Nakdong River has gradual gradient, so the speed of water is slow as it nears to the mouth, and danger of flood is difficult to avoid.
So far, overflow has been prevented by building high banks,but thanks to the Nakdong River restoration project, river beds are improved to make the water flow fluent, which can solve the fundamental problem. In fact, the height of some banks in mid-low parts of the river exceeds 20m, which may cause disaster when the banks collapsed. Also, the banks built in1970s and 80s are too old, so possibility of leakage remains.
Although its basin size is similar to that of the Han River, its flood control ability is only one third, the Nakdong has suffered fear of overflow, but if small-medium sized dams and eightweirs are built, this problem will be solved. Particularly, flood control capacity over heavy rain will be improved, and as watercourse finds proper speed, the water quality will become better with a certain amount of water at normal times to provide living, industrial and agricultural water.
Stronger supervision of the Nakdong River's water quality around farms and industrial regions is also noteworthy. The plan is to increase self-purification capacity of the river and reduce pollution in ten or so main supervised areas.
