Cities and Provinces which Ignored the Prior Environmental Review System to be Audited

It is expected that local governments that performed construction without undergoing prior environmental review will be audited by the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI). The Ministry of Environment requested the BAI on February 11 to audit businesses, local governments which pushed forward 68 development projects without prior environmental review from 2001 to 2004, and the metropolitan cities and provinces which failed to monitor them.

It is first time ever that the ministry has asked for an audit for failure to undergo prior environmental review processes.

The prior environmental review is a system under which businesses that are planning construction work of a development project consult with local environmental authorities over whether the construction would not have a harmful effect on the environment at the stage of investigating the validity of the construction.

However, there were many cases in which businesses which did construction ignored the system because they got only light restrictions like warnings.

In addition, the effectiveness of the system was also questioned, as a recent request of the Environment Ministry to metropolitan cities and provinces, which are confirmation and permission authorities for construction, was not accepted. The ministry requested those authorities to report 18 private businesses and eight cities and counties including Hadong County, South Gyeongsang Province, which did construction without prior environmental review.

In order to root out the practice of ignoring a system, the ministry requested an audit of not only local governments which pushed forward construction, but also the metropolitan cities and provinces which confirmed and permitted the construction.

Wan-Bae Lee roryrery@donga.com