Four Rivers Project

[Anchor Lead]

The Board of Audit and Inspection on Wednesday announced the results of a year-long probe into the former Lee Myung-bak government's signature project to restore the country’s four major rivers. In addition to the 23 trillion won already spent, the project requires continued costs for river maintenance. A study on its economic feasibility shows a 25 trillion won loss over 50 years.

[Pkg]

The former Lee Myung-bak administration spent 23 trillion won on the four-river restoration project between October 2009 and December 2012. Maintaining the river facilities over 50 years would require over 31 trillion won. The total amount includes 24.7 trillion won needed for the restoration of the four rivers and additional costs required for maintenance and reinvestment. However, benefits gained from the project are estimated at a mere 6.6 trillion won. In other words, the 31-trillion-won investment would only generate an effect worth six trillion won. This means that nearly 25 trillion won went down the drain. The benefits include three and a half trillion won in terms of creating a better waterfront environment for the public, while improvement in water quality is worth 230 billion won. But there was zero effect in flood prevention, the primary reason of the river restoration project.

[Soundbite] Park Chan-seok (Board of Audit & Inspection): "The economic analysis is based on the actual cost of the project and actually measured data. The benefit on flood prevention may have been underestimated due to low precipitation since the project was launched."

The economic analysis of the Lee Myung-bak administration's river restoration project was conducted by the Seoul National University's Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation at the request of the Board of Audit and Inspection.