Shinan-gun, Proactive Response to Worst Drought Shows Significant Effectiveness

Implementation of Level 4 Response Plan from February 'Water Supply Efficiency 87.9%'

[Sinan=Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Choi Jae-kyung] Sinan-gun, Jeollanam-do is seeing the effectiveness of proactive measures to overcome the worst drought in 30 years.

Sinan-gun is composed entirely of islands, and most areas rely on local water supply systems, making water supply conditions worse compared to the mainland even under normal circumstances.

In particular, due to the unprecedented drought in 30 years, as of November 14, Sinan-gun's rainfall is only 654mm, which is just 62% of the average rainfall, and the average reservoir levels of 13 local water supply sites remain between 17% and 30%.

Despite the adverse conditions for water supply, Sinan-gun has received internal and external praise as its multifaceted proactive response has proven effective.

First, anticipating the prolonged drought, since February this year, Sinan-gun established a preemptive emergency water supply system with four stages?interest, caution, alert, and severe?along with plans to utilize alternative water sources, focusing on preemptive response rather than disaster recovery.

According to this response plan, Sinan-gun invested 2.8 billion KRW of its own budget early to develop alternative water sources such as groundwater and agricultural water pumping.

Alongside this, water-saving campaigns were actively conducted targeting residents, encouraging the use of rinse cups, doing laundry in batches, and prohibiting watering crops with tap water.

As a result of the campaign, Amtae and Bigeum-myeon have achieved water savings of over 450 tons per day.

In particular, Sinan-gun is accelerating the ‘Local Water Supply Modernization Project’ with a project cost of 30.7 billion KRW, raising the water retention rate from 50.3% to 87.9%. Sinan-gun’s proactive efforts tailored to field conditions are proving effective during the drought period.

Park Woo-ryang, the mayor of Sinan-gun, stated, “Starting with Maehwa-do in December this year, the ‘Sinan-gun Wide-area Water Supply Project’ to supply wide-area water to four central region myeon by 2025 and to the entire area except Heuksan-myeon by 2030 is progressing smoothly,” adding, “We will free ourselves from the persistent drought, which has been perceived as an inevitable hardship of island life.”