Water Supply Cutoff in Chuncheon City Restored to Normal After One Week

City, "Cause of Water Outage Expected to Be Aging Components"
Emergency Response Measures Prepared and Compensation Promised to Affected Residents and Businesses

Mayor Lee Jae-su's Briefing on the Dansu Incident [Provided by Chuncheon City]

[Asia Economy Reporter La Youngcheol] The tap water outage incident that occurred in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province on the 9th was normalized after a week.

Chuncheon City announced on the same day that "normal water supply is being carried out from today (the 15th) in all 25 eup, myeon, and dong areas."

Mayor Lee Jaesoo of Chuncheon held a press conference in the afternoon at the city hall briefing room and officially apologized, saying, "Tap water is directly related to citizens' daily lives and small business operations, so the operation and management status should have been thoroughly checked in advance, but we caused great inconvenience due to the unprecedented city-wide water outage."

The mayor stated, "This morning, water supply was finally restored to one household in Sudong-ri, Namsan-myeon, where water had not come out until the last moment," and added, "We conducted water quality tests including turbidity at 58 locations for safe tap water supply, and all were deemed suitable."

He continued, "The cause of this outage is expected to be aging parts," and added, "We will replace them early and secure parts in advance for emergencies."

He also said, "This incident revealed shortcomings at each stage of tap water supply, so we will conduct detailed structural safety inspections of water intake and purification facilities and establish countermeasures to respond immediately to emergencies."

The mayor promised a phased modernization project for water facilities, saying, "We will relocate the Yongsan Water Purification Plant by 2023 and install an advanced water treatment facility."

The city plans to relocate the Soyang water intake station, currently located in Wolgok-ri, into the Soyang Dam next year. The intake station will operate in parallel with the current one to enhance intake stability, and three out of five pumps at the intake station will be replaced with new ones.

Meanwhile, the city decided to establish reasonable compensation standards as soon as possible for households and businesses affected by the water outage.

The mayor said, "We are currently providing water bill reductions based on the amount of turbid water discharged per household, compensation for filter replacement costs, and bottled water purchase costs, and we will prepare a school meal safety manual to respond to tap water issues such as outages and turbidity."

Earlier, in the Chuncheon area, water supply to the entire city was gradually interrupted from 2 p.m. on the 9th due to a malfunction at the water intake facility, but was normalized after about nine hours.

However, in highland and peripheral areas, tap water was not supplied normally for several days, and due to the outage, some schools suspended meals and businesses such as restaurants suffered damages from brown water.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.