SLC Changing Landfill Site
into ''Dream Park'

Implements actions plans with an eye to realizing the goal

Sudokwon Landfill Site Management Corp. is devoting more energy into realizing its vision of transforming its vast landfill site into a "dream park."SLC President Park Dae-moon on January 19 announced the 2006 business plan outlining four core goals and 19 tasks designed to realize its vision, dubbed "dream Park toward Development of District."The four core goals are building an environment-friendly waste treatment system model; processing waste into resources; development and spread of waste treatment technologies; and the construction of a Dream Park.
The business plan calls for pushing the Dream Park Development Project for the waste-in-place first phase section of the landfill site in earnest together with neighborhood residents.
Lee Sung-don, chief of the corporation's planning and public relations bureau, said, "Such institutional preparations as a revision of the law governing SLC has been finished up for the Dream Park project, and SLC will do its utmost to transform the area into a park with a combination of leisure and cultural activities together with neighborhood residents."The long-term project calls for establishment of Wildflower Complex, Sport Arena, Nature Exploration Complex, Environmental Events Complex, Leisure & Sports Complex and Environmental Cultural Center.
The waste disposal site, measuring about 6.02 million pyeong or 19.8 million sq. meters in size, is as large as seven times the size of Yeouidou, a former islet in downtown Seoul. Out of the waste-in-place area covering 1.24 million pyeong or 4.09 sq. meters, SLC plans to build a wild flower garden, sporting and other facilities.
The corporation requested permission for the Incheon municipal government to designate the 700,000-odd pyeong area for building the planned golf course and other sporting facilities as a sporting facility site. The amendment on the Act on SLC, made last December, stipulates the establishment of a foundation designed to manage the projected sporting facilities and commission of their operation.
Specifically speaking, SLC is seeking to build a nature study and observation zone compassing a wild flower garden that can grow different wild flowers according to four seasons and such themes as medicinal, edible, textile and aromatic use. The corporation is also pushing a project to construct an ecological environment experience zone with a multipurpose lawn plaza designed to hold diverse events and sporting activities and experiment cultivation and preservation of rare plant species in danger of extinction.
SLC plans to not only plant floral plants, flowers and lawns, but also construct such facilities as access roads and water supply facilities as part of its efforts to build a sporting park on the top surface of the First Landfill Site. It will conduct an environment impact assessment on the sporting parking project in a bid to ensure efficient management of the planned park.
In a bid to promote collaboration with the neighborhood community, SLC will hire a combined 25,000 residents in planting trees under the Dream Park Development Project and the maintenance of afforestation zones in the First and Second Landfill Sites as well as production and supply of flowers and floral species.
SLC plans to establish a logical support and cooperation system in the interests of neighborhood residents, calling for shifting support focus from projects for each household to communal projects. As part of its efforts to turn waste into energy resources, SLC is seeking to implement a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) project designed to process the solid waste generated by the landfill site into fuel.
The corporation will work out ways of turning waste into resources, based on a feasibility study on the RDF project. It seeks to install an experimental RDF facility through consultation with the Environment Ministry and three provincial and municipal governments.
The landfill site is originally designed to accommodate garbage from all the districts of the Seoul Metropolitan area, except nine counties, for about 30 years until the year 2023, but the life span of the landfill site, covering an area where 21 million people reside, may be prolonged as the inflow of food leftovers is declining and more and more counties along with other local authorities are returning to the use of incinerators for treating garbage.
Unlike the former Nanji Landfill Site, which resorted to an open-dumping method, Sudokwon Landfill Site is a landfill facility managed on a scientific and sanitary basis. Sudokwon Landfill Site has established a 165-cm-long base facility, composed of a groundwater drainage layer (30 cm), lining layer (75 cm), and leachate layer (60 cm), which are designed to eradicate the source of environmental pollution caused by leachate from waste materials. For the creation of a sanitary landfill, Sudokwon Landfill Site has also built up a landfill gas collection system that accounts for changes in site conditions such as the settlement of waste materials, rainwater and leachate treatment, as well as outer riverbanks and interior roads during each step of the disposal process.
Sudokwon Landfill Site piles up waste in eight steps to reach the highest point, measuring 40 meters high, equivalent to the height of an 18-story apartment, similar to siluddeok, a traditional Korean rice cake cooked on an earthen pot, is made. Each step is filled with 4.5 meters of waste, and 50 cm of fresh outside soil is added on it in an upward waste placement method. Waste is stacked in the formation of daily unit cells in a bid to prevent noxious odors, vermin and flying debris. nw

Workers at SLC's greenhouse attend to flowers and plants before being transplanted at the former landfill site.

SLC President Park Dae-moon

An artist conception of "DreamPark,"to be envisaged by SLC