President Lee Myung-bak’s signature project of remaking the nation’s four largest rivers has proved to be a near total failure. What’s shocking is not the diagnosis itself but the fact that it was made by the top state auditor, not an environmental group.
Announcing the result of its inspection of the ``four-river refurbishment” project, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said almost everything went awry, from the poor designing of the 16 weirs to their shoddy construction. It even questioned whether the $20-billion project could attain its foremost objectives of preventing floods and improving water quality.
For those, this paper included, who have long been skeptical of the strange public works that will essentially end up turning rivers into lakes, the watchdog agency’s conclusion is only natural, albeit coming too late.
Far more important questions should focus on how to minimize its adverse effects and who should take the responsibility for sowing the seeds for a potential environmental catastrophe ― at an astronomical cost at that. Lee’s construction minister still maintains the auditors are exaggerating partial problems as if they are the whole, and there will be few problems with some supplementary work.
That was also what the watchdog said after its first audit in 2011. So the board first ought to tell why it has produced all but contrasting inspection results over a period of just one-and-a-half years. Officials must also explain why they made public the recent conclusion, reached four months ago, during this sensitive period of governmental transition. Doesn’t this have something to do with President-elect Park Geun-hye’s strategy to break away from all policy failures made by her predecessor of the same party?
As a candidate, Park neither opposed nor supported the project, and said she would launch a committee to rectify problems if there are any.
Park should not be held accountable for the outgoing leader’s mistakes but the incoming president should take the responsibility for preventing it from developing into a bigger problem while correctly calculating costs in the future.
She needs to recall in this regard the green algae that covered several sections of the large rivers and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of fish last summer. Government officials said this was not because of the river project but because of an extremely hot spell and unusual weather of alternating between heavy rain and drought. What they didn’t know, or say, was such abnormal weather will become the ``new normal” in the future.
Simply put, the nation will have to pay an enormous price for the ignorance and obstinacy of Lee and his aides, proving the age-old adage, ``Stagnant water is bound to rot.”
When independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo vowed to tear down the weirs, the ruling party and conservative media accused him of resorting to amateurish populism. The BAI’s conclusion shows that Ahn was essentially right, which forces Park to choose between returning the rivers to their original state despite the huge sums already wasted, and continuing to pour money into keeping them in current forms.
The BAI has added one more to Park’s list of urgent tasks to tackle upon taking office. Park must activate the pledged panel as soon as possible and review the whole process from the ground up.
Based on its outcome, she will have to make key officials, including her predecessor, take political and judicial responsibility according to their levels of involvement. That should be the minimal discipline for wasting taxpayer’s money to satisfy personal ambitions, and for failing to check, even encouraging, such a reckless act.