Current Status of Sewerage Technology Evalution Verification System and Direction for Improvement of the System

하수도 기술의 평가 인증제도 운영현황 및 방향

As sewerage works has become one of the major public works in Korea, the employment of advanced and more appropriate sewerage technology has become essential to improve the efficiency of sewerage works. During last 10 years, the Korean Government has made tremendous amount of investment on sewerage works so that treatment plants in 58 cities have treatment capacity which is equivalent to 52.8% of total daily sewage generation in Korea. This remarkable development, however, has heavily depended on one technology, the conventional activated sludge process as more than 95% of the existing plants employ this process, Recently, the Korean Government and local authorities have plans to introduce more appropriate sewage treatment technologies and research and development in this area has become very active. To encourage employing new and appropriate technologies, however, the proper technology evaluation and verification program for new process is needed. The public sector should play a key role in this program since the sewerage works is one of the major public works. In this paper, the technology evaluation and verification programs related with sewerage facilities in the US and Japan are briefly reviewed. The Innovatived and Alternative Technology programs which was operated by US EPA until recently and Environmental Technology Verification(ETV) program which was commenced in 1995 are introduced. The technology verification programs operated in Japan and also in Korea are also reviewed in this paper to propose a future direction for development of the appropriate evaluation and verification system.