President Park Jae-hyeon of Korea Water Resources Corp. (K-water)

The Presidential Committee on Water Management and Korea Water Resources Corp. (K-water) inaugurated a state-run integrated water management consultative body, along with six other public entities and research institutes.

The Presidential Committee on Water Management held a ceremony to inaugurate the integrated water management consultation body with K-water, Korea Rural Community Corp. (K-eco), Korea Environment Corp., Korea Environment Corp., Korean Environment Institute, Korea Rural Economic Institute, Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, and Korea Institute of Construction at the committee’s building in Seoul on June 1.

The integrated water management consultation body is charged with executing integrated water management policies ranging from responses to disasters to state water management according to people’s needs.

Each organization participating in the consultative body will complement a statewide collaboration regime necessary for integrated water management by inaugurating a working-level body within the committee.

K-water and other participating public entities will form working-level cooperation teams to explore ways of cooperation in jointly responding to disasters and analyze water balance and additional collaboration projects in each sector.

Korean Environment Institute and three other research institutes will form a working-level body to designate research tasks on improving water management policies and conducting studies on an individual or collaborative basis.

K-water President Park Jae-hyeon said, “The formation of the state integrated water management consultation body will serve as an opportunity to conduct a wider range of integrated water management considering ecosystem and the prevention of disasters on top of water amounts and water quality.”

K-water will devote itself to spearheading the innovation of water management the way people can sense changes, he added.

A view of the Integrated Water Management Situation Room at K-water Headquarters. (Photos: K-water)

K-water Responsible for Matters Related to Tap Water

Korea Water Resources Corp. will be a unified agency charged with overall tap water functions, including the installation and operation of tap water facilities. On the other hand, K-eco will be responsible for sewerage management functions such as site pollutant management.

The revisions of the K-water Act and two other laws contained the realigning of functions in water management sector, which had been divided among the Environment Ministry, K-water and K-eco.

According to the realigning of water management functions, K-water will be charged with overall tap water functions, including the installation and operation of tap water facilities and policy support.

K-water will be responsible for building a tap water management regime so that people can use tap water without misgivings, strengthening water demand management, creating a water supply regime along basins, improving water welfare in vulnerable areas, and performing other steps to support people’s sustainable water usage.

Now that K-water become a unified agency specializing in jobs related to the installation and operation of tap water facilities in metropolitan and provincial areas, the corporation will be committed to enhancing efficiency of tap water facilities by removing the overlapping and duplicating of tap water facility management and investments, which had been raised so far.

In the past, K-water was charged with overall duties such as the installation and operation of tap water facilities in metropolitan areas and agricultural water use as well as commissioned management of trap water facilities in provincial areas, whereas K-eco was responsible for policy support and commissioned tap water management in provincial areas.

The revisions stipulate that site pollution management will be delegated to K-eco, a unified agency specializing in water quality management in consideration of the execution of water quality improvement projects.