지속가능한 지하수의 이용을 위한 우리나라 지하수 관련 법제의 과제

Abstract

Exploiting groundwater requires extreme caution, in part because nature, once deformed or destroyed, is nearly impossible to restore to its original state. Of course, a precautionary approach necessarily entail law and regulation. There are a lot of legislations related to groundwater, such as Groundwater Act, Hot Spring Act, Drinking Water Management Act, and so on, however, there are many flaws in our groundwater legislations. Recently groundwater has taken a considerable portion of whole water resource. In order to maintain high-quality groundwater, the government should devise a comprehensive policy and improve law for the sustainable development of groundwater. I suggest the following: clear criteria and definition of groundwater pollution and bad quality; management method considering characteristics of groundwater; breakaway from development-oriented policy. In foreign countries, there is enactments which is the ownership of river separated from river site and it is recognized ground water as public water, therefore it suggests that we also need to separate groundwater from a right of landowner and to recognize groundwater as public water. Unlike other laws, there are provisions about development as many as those about preservation in the Groundwater Act. As we realize that groundwater is a limited resource and it cannot be monopolized by landowner, we need to look to ways of improving our legislations for groundwater as a public water resource.