ed Change of rivers

For the past two years, the nation’s four largest rivers have undergone changes they haven’t experienced in two centuries. Bulldozers straightened winding river flows, excavators dredged riverbeds and cranes built weirs, or mini dams, to create huge water bowls in what the government called the ``four-river refurbishment” project.

As with most key projects tackled by the Lee Myung-bak administration, popular opinion was poles apart over the $18-billion public work, too. Its proponents say the project will reduce flood damage, enhance water quality as well as quantity and create riverside resorts. Opponents say it’s against Nature, destroys the environment beyond recovery and is an enormous waste of taxpayer money.

We’ve seen duels between conservationists and “developmentalists,” or Nature versus civilization, but few were so opposite as this, which allowed no middle ground. People who are neither environmental experts nor river specialists find it extremely hard to judge, just thinking time will tell.

The problem with this wait-and-see approach is that it takes quite a long time to know the ultimate result. But there is an urgent need for a budget to continue follow-up projects of refurbishing tributaries and operating completed facilities.

This is why we call for the government to take some time and reexamine the entire process instead of jumping to the second-phase of the project. In the same vein, this page initially urged the administration to experiment on one of the four rivers and then proceed toward others based on its results. But the government pushed ahead with all four rivers simultaneously, resulting in severe shortage of materials and manpower and unnecessarily pushing up costs and even costing dozens of workers their lives.

Officials say the project has already brought about benefits, such as sharply reduced flood damage even in this year’s record-high rainfall. Some riverside residents also appear satisfied with the neatly changed living environment ― and expectations for higher land prices. But the flood damage statistics are suspected of what statisticians call the ``massaging of figures,” while changes in landscape can be deceiving.

Already, local governments are bent on building large resort complexes, golf courses and other commercial facilities, which, if left unchecked, could lead to pollution of the rivers and other environmental degradation. Yet they are reportedly far from eager to manage the pollution-control and other facilities, a job which takes considerable money and manpower.

In a ceremony Saturday, President Lee called for facilitating the river reformation project, citing the ``remodeling theory of national land” by Ahn Chang-ho, a national leader in the early 20th century when Korea was a pre-modern, feudal state.

Alarming is the advice of some foreign experts in this regard. A group of U.S., German and Japanese specialists recently said here that in today’s theory, rivers are best and give the biggest benefits to humans when they are left to flow on their own. America, which artificially reformed ― or deformed ― some rivers as early as a century ago, has spent trillions of dollars on restoring them to their original shape.

All this explains why the government should step back and think before going ahead.