Future City Forum Holds Policy Forum on 'Future of Suwon Environmental Facilities'

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Jung Jun-sung] The Future City Forum (Advisor Lee Ki-woo, former National Assemblyman) held a policy forum on the 7th with the theme 'Future of Suwon Environmental Facilities'.

Participants in the forum included advisor Lee Ki-woo, Professor Kim Jung-gyu of Dongnam University's Department of Bioenviromental Health, Representative Byeon Jin-won of KE Environmental Safety Academy, Chairman Kong Hak-hyeon of the Korea Environmental Culture Federation, and former Senior Presidential Secretary Park Jung-ho, who served as panelists.

The forum, held to diagnose the current status of essential environmental facilities such as Suwon's wastewater treatment plants and waste incineration facilities and to prepare future response strategies, invited Dr. Kim Deok-jin, a specialist in water and sewerage, to present cases from advanced countries including revenue-generating private investment projects that are spreading in Japan and Europe, and discussed methods for their application to Suwon.

Dr. Kim Deok-jin is a doctorate holder in civil engineering from Tohoku University in Japan and was listed in 2016 in 'Marquis Who's Who', considered the most authoritative of the world's three major biographical dictionaries, as one of the world's top experts in the water and sewerage field.

At the forum, Dr. Kim said, "Despite being the most important facilities that enable comfortable living, essential environmental facilities such as wastewater treatment plants and waste incineration facilities have been neglected as shunned facilities by citizens," and added, "Advanced countries such as Japan and Europe are gaining citizens' affection through revolutionary improvements to these facilities."

Dr. Kim went on to introduce a remodeling project at Tokyo's Shibaura Wastewater Treatment Plant, explaining, "Advanced countries have already transformed citizen-shunned environmental facilities into state-of-the-art, eco-friendly facilities through revenue-generating private investment projects."

At this occasion, Advisor Lee Ki-woo stated, "Environmental facilities in Suwon such as wastewater treatment plants and waste incineration facilities were mostly installed decades ago, are located in the heart of the city, or have reached the end of their service life, requiring fundamental improvement measures," and emphasized that "Suwon-tailored environmental measures should be prepared by benchmarking advanced country cases."

Meanwhile, the Future City Forum is hosting various seminars and forums to pursue innovative future development for cities including the newly launched Suwon Special Metropolitan City.