[News Focus] Incheon landfill deal stirs controversy

Controversy has stirred over the metropolitan landfill agreement for household waste management that Seoul City and the neighboring provinces reached over the weekend after a yearlong dispute.

The Incheon city government agreed to extend the use of its landfill site for the capital and Gyeonggi Province to dump their household waste in exchange for financial benefits. The landfill site was set to close by next year as it was expected to be full by then.

The landfill site of 16 million square meters was built in western Incheon in 1992 to bury the waste from the capital and Gyeonggi Province. The Environment Ministry and Seoul City purchased the land to solve the waste problem.

Seoul City, Gyeonggi Province and the Environment Ministry asked Incheon last year to extend the land use for 30 more years, as the landfill site was deemed sufficient to accommodate the waste until then. Less than half of the site has been filled, as the amount of trash has been reduced by the nationwide volume-rate disposal system, which requires residents to purchase and use specialized trash bags.

The Incheon government had declined the request, citing public complaints over odors.

Upon the Sunday negotiation, the regional leaders agreed to use the current landfill site until it reaches half capacity. In the meantime, Seoul City and Gyeonggi Province promised to construct their own landfill sites in their regions, officials said.

If the two fail to build their alternative landfill sites, Incheon said it would allow them to use up to 15 percent of the second half of the current landfill site.

Some claimed that this practically allows Seoul City and Gyeonggi Province to use Incheon’s landfill site until 2025.

While Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok claimed that the core of the latest deal is not the extension of the use, but a negotiation to construct alternative landfill sites in other cities, some argued that Yoo virtually allowed other regional governments to indefinitely use Incheon’s landfill site.

“The agreement does not specify or guarantee the exact expiration date of the landfill site use. Depending on the type of the waste landfill, the capital and Gyeonggi Province can use it for 10 or 20 more years, which actually indicates that the mayor succumbed to the other regions’ original request,” said Incheon city council members of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy.

Civic groups in Incheon urged Yoo to nullify the agreement, stressing that they would continue their protest against the contract extension.

“The agreement is only full of measures set for extending the landfill site use. This is apparently the mayor’s attempt to shift his responsibility for building landfill alternative plans to the next term leader,” said residents living near the concerned landfill site.

Some raised suspicion that Yoo accepted the agreement to overcome the city’s financial crisis.

As of late last year, Incheon was buried under 4.8 trillion won ($4.2 billion) in debt after hosting the Asian Games earlier in the year. The city’s debt-to-budget ratio hit 37.5 percent, the highest figure among metropolitan cities and provinces in the country, officials said.

In return for allowing the extension of the landfill site use, Seoul City and the ministry offered to hand over the license rights of the landfill site and its land ownership worth 1.8 trillion won to Incheon. Currently, 71.3 percent of the landfill site shares are owned by Seoul City, with the rest owned by the ministry.

They also vowed to transfer the authority to collect waste commission fees worth 120 billion won a year to Incheon. The commission rate is expected to hike by 50 percent starting next year, providing 60 billion won of additional revenue to Incheon.

By Lee Hyun-jeong (rene@heraldcorp.com)