It is shocking that 430,000 tons of the chemical fertilizer and livestock excretion used on Korea's farmlands each year are contaminating the environment. In other words, each year 53,000 eight-ton trucks are contaminating the land or the water. Some of it is reaching underground water, rivers, and the sea.
A representative example of the damage can be seen in the "red tide phenomenon." In 2005 were three times the water quality warnings in Lake Paldang and nine other water sources around the country as there were in 2004. Those reservoirs and other water sources produce the water that directly relates to the people's health, and "red tide" occurred three out of every four days. Last year was also the final year in a W27 trillion, 10-year government plan for better water management. Red tide in tap water has toxins that cause abdominal pain, disease-causing organisms, and cancer-causing material. It is getting worse every year; red tide occurred on 58 days on the south coast last year, and 1.6 million hatched fish died as a result.
The latent danger is even bigger. In Canada in 2000, nine people died after drinking tap water that had not been properly disinfected. It is horrifying to think of what happens to us when we eat the fish products that first ate the disease-causing microorganisms that are in the ocean. The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries spends a massive amount of money on controlling red tide, but that is just a waste of taxes if the water keeps being polluted with the contaminated materials that come from the land.
The Ministry of the Environment predicts that nonpoint pollution sources are going to occupy an increasingly greater percentage of what contaminates the water. It remains unclear whether the plan to establish caps on the number of cattle that can be held in on place is going to be implemented. That being the case, it's obvious what the results of the W37 trillion ten-year plan on water quality management are going to be. A realistic policy needs to be implemented before Korea becomes the land of livestock excrement.
The Hankyoreh, 1 April 2006.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] Managing Water Quality |
