The Environment Ministry will halt construction at 7 of the 14 new dam sites pushed under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration that have low necessity and strong resident opposition, and will decide whether to proceed with the remaining 7 after public deliberation and a review of alternatives. It also plans to initiate a Board of Audit and Inspection review to check whether there were problems in the process of promoting the new dams.
According to the Environment Ministry on the 30th, the sites where construction has been halted are as follows: ▲ Suipcheon Dam (Yanggu) ▲ Danyangcheon Dam (Danyang) ▲ Okcheon Dam (Suncheon) ▲ Dongbokcheon Dam (Hwasun) ▲ Sanggicheon Dam (Samcheok) ▲ Unmuncheon Dam (Cheongdo) ▲ Yongducheon Dam (Yecheon).
Among these, Suipcheon, Danyangcheon, and Okcheon dams had already been put on hold by the previous administration due to strong resident opposition, and Dongbokcheon Dam faced intense pushback after the announcement of a plan to add a new dam between existing ones. Sanggicheon Dam is originally a drinking-water-only dam that local governments should review on their own, but it became problematic after the previous administration forcibly included it as a national project.
Some sites have alternatives. For Yongducheon Dam, installing floodgates on the pumped-storage dam located downstream of the candidate site would secure a flood control capacity larger than the planned 2.1 million tons (t), and for Unmuncheon Dam, an analysis found that additional water supply could be secured simply by river maintenance downstream of the existing Unmun Dam and restoring the dam's operating water level.
The remaining seven dams to undergo public deliberation are: ▲ Jicheon Dam (Cheongyang, Buyeo) ▲ Gamcheon Dam (Gimcheon) ▲ Amicheon Dam (Yeoncheon) ▲ Garyecheon Dam (Uiryeong) ▲ Gohyeoncheon Dam (Geoje) ▲ Hoeya River Dam (Ulsan) ▲ Byeongyeongcheon Dam (Gangjin).
For Jicheon and Gamcheon dams, where local residents are sharply divided, a range of alternatives, including scrapping the projects, will be discussed, and for Amicheon Dam, officials will review whether a multipurpose dam or a flood control dam is more appropriate. For Garyecheon and Gohyeoncheon dams, the government will consider supplementing flood control by installing floodgates instead of raising the height of previously planned agricultural reservoirs (raising the embankment). For Hoeya River and Byeongyeongcheon dams, the scale and appropriateness of the plans will be reassessed.
The Environment Ministry expects this measure to reduce the initially projected project cost from 4.7 trillion won to about 2 trillion won. It also anticipated further savings during the alternative review and public deliberation processes. The ministry plans to consider using the freed-up budget to widen river maintenance zones or for flood damage prevention measures.
The Environment Ministry will also systematize dam management in collaboration with related agencies such as the Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-water). Minister Kim Seong-hwan said, "In addition to the dams managed by the Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-water), there are many pumped-storage dams managed by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, agricultural reservoirs managed by the Korea Rural Community Corporation, and drinking water dams managed by local governments, but the interconnectivity among dams was very low," adding, "We will integrate and operate them in collaboration so that each dam can also have flood control functions."
In this reexamination process, the Environment Ministry also pointed out problems with the previous administration's dam policy. Even when combining the storage capacities of all 14 dams, the total amounts to only 11% (320 million tons) of Soyang River Dam, making it insufficient to cope with the climate crisis; the projects were pushed without resident consent, heightening conflicts; and alternative reviews of existing pumped-storage dams and agricultural reservoirs were inadequate.
The Minister said, "Dams that are insufficient even to be described as climate crisis response dams for flood control were pushed through," adding, "We will take steps to review, through the Board of Audit and Inspection's procedures, whether there were problems in the previous administration's policy decision-making process."
Meanwhile, since Jul. this year, the Environment Ministry has conducted a detailed reexamination of the necessity, appropriateness, and local acceptability of the dams, taking into account factors such as the effectiveness of new dams in preventing floods and droughts and the pros and cons among local residents. In this process, Minister Kim Seong-hwan personally visited 10 dam candidate sites, including Amicheon, Yongducheon, and Gamcheon, to hear from a wide range of stakeholders.