Gyeonggi Province Establishes '4 Major Innovation Plans' for Local River Maintenance Projects...Pursuing River Administration Aligned with Citizens' Expectations

[Suwon Ilbo=Park No-hun Reporter] Gyeonggi Province announced on the 3rd that it has established 'Innovation Plans for Local River Maintenance Projects' tailored to regional characteristics and citizens' needs, which will be implemented starting this year.

This follows the transfer of 'Local River Maintenance Projects,' which had been implemented as national treasury subsidy projects under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, to metropolitan local governments starting this year.

Unlike past practices that focused on simple river widening and raising embankments for flood prevention according to Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport guidelines, the province plans to implement river administration aligned with citizens' expectations by considering complex factors including water quality, aesthetics, and ecology.

The province's first direction is 'Local rivers with clean water flowing continuously.' The plan is to move away from maintenance methods focused on river widening and prevent side effects such as dried-up rivers or water quality deterioration that could occur.

To achieve this, when implementing maintenance projects, the province will use wastewater treatment plant discharge water or reservoir water to ensure clean water flows constantly, and plans to remove sludge (polluted sediment) during maintenance projects to improve water quality.

The second direction is 'Package-type river projects with citizen consensus.' The goal is to create river environments where local residents can actually experience results and feel satisfied through public-private cooperative administration with citizens.

First, when implementing river projects, the province plans to involve local residents and civic organizations as external committee members from project selection through detailed design services, allowing them to directly reflect their ideas in river design.

The province also plans to discover and implement projects with high synergy effects with surrounding areas through public recruitment in the second half of this year. The plan includes connecting river projects with urban regeneration projects to create parks, parking lots, and retention facilities, or creating cultural spaces by utilizing islets or abandoned river sites.

The third direction is 'Simultaneous river maintenance during urban development.' The province plans to maximize policy effectiveness by comprehensively implementing urban development and river maintenance in connection with each other.

During urban development including third new cities, the province plans to provide opinions so that project implementers can comprehensively review ecology, water volume, and water quality of rivers and reflect them in urban plans, and review utilization plans such as developing water-related facilities from water supply facilities like reservoirs and weirs that have lost their functions due to development projects.

The fourth direction is 'Prevention of duplicate projects within the same river.' The province plans to prevent duplicate investments and achieve budget savings through cooperation with municipal governments and related departments.

Specifically, the province plans to prevent duplicate processes such as excavation through prior consultation with other projects including bicycle paths and sewage pipe maintenance, and plans to further enhance disaster prevention effects by implementing drainage improvement projects and disaster risk mitigation projects in conjunction with river projects.

Go Kang-soo, director of the River Division, said, "We expect that citizens' satisfaction with river policies will improve through the establishment of this new policy direction for local rivers," and added, "We will continue to implement river administration that reduces budgets while maximizing policy effectiveness."