Who Pays to Host Busan’s Waste?

Busan has spent years securing a site for metropolitan waste treatment, through land acquisition, relocation and arrangements that gave nearby residents a stake in the disposal economy. As the city plans another incinerator at Saenggok, the value of that investment depends on the future costs and obligations it can actually avoid—not merely on what has already been paid.

At a Busan Metropolitan Council hearing in November 2022, the price of relocating a village next to the city's landfill came under scrutiny. A council member questioned the proposed acquisition of recycling facilities at an estimated 23.3 billion won. The city's senior environmental official explained that the land belonged to Busan, while the facilities had developed through agreements with Saenggok residents: the municipality had financed the first plant as support for hosting the landfill, and residents had built the second on land supplied by the city. Municipal collection systems furnished the operation with recyclable material at favorable prices, helping make it a source of income for the host community. What appeared in a relocation plan as the purchase of facilities was also the unwinding of an economic arrangement through which the city had helped secure a place to dispose of its waste.

Six months earlier, Busan had announced an agreement to move residents of Saenggok, whose homes had stood alongside metropolitan waste infrastructure for decades. The city described the settlement as redress for a long-running conflict, but it also spoke of securing a landfill capable of permanent use. An earlier agreement with the residents limited operations to 2031, according to the announcement. The distinction mattered to a metropolitan government that needed disposal capacity beyond any individual agreement: the land and infrastructure were valuable, but continued access to them had been negotiated through obligations to people living there. The subsequent plan for a new incinerator at Saenggok drew on a site whose public value had been built as much through those commitments as through physical construction.

That process has been more complicated than the chronology in a budget plan might suggest. Busan's 2026 expenditure entry for the group relocation lists 162 households and a total project cost of 106.923 billion won, with a project period extending from 2017 through 2031. It records planned stages of compensation, demolition and site preparation. At a July 20, 2026 council hearing, a member reported that only 26 million won of an approximately 4.528 billion-won demolition budget had been spent by the end of June—about 0.6 percent—and that the first demolition contract had been temporarily suspended in May. The city's environmental official said some residents had requested more time to move and pledged to complete relocation and demolition by year's end. The testimony captured a land-clearance program still being negotiated with residents, months after the budget's projected relocation timetable.

The proposed incinerator should be assessed against that history rather than against a blank map. Busan can reasonably expect an established waste complex to offer advantages over starting at an entirely new site. Access roads, utilities, operators familiar with the industrial setting, existing land arrangements and nearby residual-waste services can have real value. But a future plant cannot use every asset merely because it stands in the same district. The Saenggok complex handles different waste streams in distinct processes, with separate technical capacities and emissions requirements. A new furnace needs its own waste reception, pollution controls, ash handling, connections and maintenance arrangements; some shared infrastructure may have to be expanded. The economic case for staying rests on the usable services that would actually be saved, together with the cost of completing the land assembly and accommodating the new plant—not on the cumulative sum of money once spent at Saenggok.

The cost written into the settlement

The 2022 council testimony shows why the city's obligations cannot be reduced to a line labeled compensation. In the recycling business described to councillors, a public investment in buildings and land was accompanied by supply arrangements that helped residents earn income from material collected throughout Busan. The official suggested that, after relocation, some recycling operations could return to district governments. That was a proposal at the time, not proof that the transfer took place. The original agreements, business accounts and subsequent transfer documents are needed to establish what the city acquired, what income rights ended and what obligations remain. Still, the testimony identifies a concrete mechanism: host-community support can take the form of access to a public waste stream, and the economic value of that access can be borne by other parts of the municipal collection system rather than appearing as a direct grant.

Busan's published budgets likewise describe several transactions that cannot be added as if each represented the same type of compensation. The 2022 plan for the Saenggok relocation carried a total-cost figure of 101.717 billion won and explicitly referred to taking over recycling-center equipment. By 2026, the named relocation project's total-cost field had risen to 106.923 billion won, while public accounts of the incinerator controversy separately referred to 140.4 billion won for a broader relocation component. The documents do not establish that the figures share an accounting boundary. Their difference is therefore neither an audited cost overrun nor a reliable estimate of what would be lost if the incinerator moved elsewhere. The physical land retained by Busan, the rights acquired or extinguished, payments already made, and costs yet to be incurred must be separated before assigning any value to a decision taken now.

The distinction between historical expenditure and future cost is consequential. A payment made to acquire land cannot be recovered by pretending it never occurred, but land that the city can use or sell retains value; abandoning a proposed use may also create enforceable repayment, repurchase or additional compensation obligations. An official claim that changing the site's purpose would trigger former owners' rights requires examination of the acquisition instruments and applicable law, not simply a statement of how much the city invested. In a forward-looking comparison, a past payment matters through the asset or liability that remains. Its original amount is not itself a measure of what Busan would save by completing the incinerator.

A different part of the host-community settlement appears in Busan's resident-support fund. The city's official 2026 expenditure entry assigns 3.513 billion won to a program improving living conditions around the Saenggok and Noksan landfill areas. The entry gives a 2026–2030 program period and identifies housing-environment improvements and welfare-related support, including commitments associated with the affected villages. Those descriptions make the fund an identifiable part of an ongoing public obligation, but the appropriation is not the sum of every benefit associated with the waste complex, nor is it a measure of compensation paid to residents of the proposed new incinerator. The city's 2026 page also lists approximately 6.098 billion won as a retrospective 2025 expenditure entry, whereas its 2025 page presents an annual budget of 3.784 billion won. Without the audited statements and a reconciliation of account classifications, carryovers and amendments, the difference cannot be used to infer that residents received more—or less—than promised.

These expenditures serve different functions even when they occur in the same neighborhood. Relocation can settle claims arising from an earlier facility and transfer control of property. Community improvements can finance benefits over a defined period. Commercial rights can distribute income from sorting and selling materials. Monitoring and corrective works can impose costs throughout a facility's operation. Treating all four as a single compensatory payment would erase the distinct obligations that made metropolitan waste treatment possible in the first place; counting each transfer as an additional resource consumed by waste disposal would also distort the economics of alternative sites.

What a district pays, and what residents receive

The financing of daily treatment follows another set of rules. Busan's waste ordinance provides for charges on waste delivered to metropolitan facilities, with reductions and exemptions under specified conditions. A hosting district can qualify for a reduction of up to 50 percent on eligible municipal waste it delivers to the facility in its jurisdiction. That is relief to a district's budget, calculated on its own eligible deliveries rather than on every ton that arrives from the metropolitan area. The ordinance also contains a conditional link to local benefits: the mayor may require a district enjoying fee reductions to give priority to projects for nearby residents, with a possible suspension of the reduction if the requirement is ignored. The discount is therefore not necessarily unrestricted, although its actual use for nearby residents can be established only from district budgets and the city's administrative decisions.

A resident-support fund is financed on a different basis. Under Article 16 of the municipal ordinance, a component is calculated from 10 percent of entry fees collected, and the city contributes an additional amount defined as half that component, with provision for further contributions. In May 2011, the Ministry of Government Legislation answered a question from Busan about what collected meant in precisely such a calculation. When a nominal fee of 16,000 won per ton had been discounted to 8,000 won, the ministry advised that the fund's 10 percent calculation should use the 8,000 won actually received. These were the figures in a historical legal interpretation, not evidence of the rates Busan charges each waste category today. The principle is that the physical movement of a ton of waste and the amount generating fee-linked support are separate quantities.

The separation is especially consequential once the purposes of those payments are considered. Entry fees redistribute the municipal cost of a shared service and can influence the price a sending district faces for additional waste. Exemptions for eligible residues and reductions for the host district may alter that price without reducing the labor or equipment required to handle the material. Support tied to collections can decline when eligible chargeable waste falls, including when prevention and separation succeed. A smaller revenue base is not itself evidence of inadequate support: fewer tons may also mean less impact, and city contributions can supplement the formula. Historical commitments and some environmental monitoring costs, however, may continue even as throughput changes. Assessing the arrangement requires knowing which expenses vary with waste volume, which obligations persist, and how the city finances the latter through the annual budget and fund.

The price charged at the gate should not be mistaken for the cost of incineration. During the October 2026 controversy, lawmaker Kim Do-eup accused the city of relying on a public entry fee of 16,000 won per ton and cited an industry-associated comparison putting public operating and transport costs at 191,981 won per ton, against 166,241 won for private treatment. Those figures entered the public debate through competing claims; the numbers were offered without a common published accounting boundary or a comparable set of contractual obligations. More fundamentally, a regulated tariff, an operating-plus-transport estimate and a private contract rate need not include the same capital costs, collection routes, ash disposal, guaranteed availability or environmental obligations. Public operation might be cheaper over the life of a plant even if its currently reported running expenses are higher on one basis; a contracted supplier might provide lower-cost capacity for an interim period while presenting very different long-term risks. A more meaningful comparison would price usable treatment capacity and the obligations attached to it over the period for which that capacity is needed.

The relevant accounts thus describe different kinds of incidence. The metropolitan government may finance construction and recurring obligations; a sending district pays an administered charge; the host district may receive relief; residents in designated areas may receive projects and entitlements; private contractors may be paid to supply additional capacity. Some of those flows are transfers between public budgets, others purchase scarce land, labor or treatment services, and still others compensate for rights or impacts. The distribution matters to host communities and sending districts, while a total-cost appraisal must avoid counting a transfer between them again as a separate physical expense.

The obligations that survive a change of neighbors

The agreements made with Saenggok residents were reached in a particular legal and physical setting. A landfill's directly affected community had accumulated claims over decades; new residential developments in western Busan now exist alongside the wider waste complex. The 2022 relocation announcement is evidence of a negotiated settlement with the original community, not a written acceptance of every future facility by all people who may live within its effects. The signed agreement and annexes must determine the scope of the parties' commitments. Separate statutory procedures determine who is entitled to representation and assistance when the surrounding impact area of another facility is designated or reconsidered.

Korean law does not make the representative population permanent simply because a facility has an established history. In a 2017 interpretation concerning another municipality, the Ministry of Government Legislation recognized that residents who moved into an already designated impact area could qualify as resident representatives; the date they began living there did not alone exclude them. In a separate 2018 case, the Supreme Court addressed the need to constitute a suitable resident council when an impact-area determination had expired and environmental conditions required redetermination. Neither ruling supplies the legal boundary around the proposed Saenggok incinerator or automatically makes every Eco Delta City resident eligible for a fund. They establish why current notices, actual environmental studies and the proper composition of resident bodies matter alongside older contracts. An administrative impact boundary also should not be confused with a measurement of all potential truck movements, odors or cumulative exposure from neighboring facilities.

Operating the site through changes in the surrounding population has a financial dimension of its own. A December 2025 council budget discussion considered the staffing and continuing expenses needed for round-the-clock odor monitoring in the Gangseo–Eco Delta area, including how responsibility might be shared between Busan and Gangseo. That exchange related to existing complaints and possible sources, not pollution proven to arise from the incinerator still under proposal. It showed, nevertheless, that credible environmental oversight requires labor, equipment, investigation and recurring maintenance long after the capital cost of a facility is recorded. If the new plant is approved, its own emission controls and monitoring obligations must be priced according to its design and impacts, rather than borrowed from the budget of the older landfill or presumed satisfied by the historic relocation.

There are good reasons for the city to negotiate different benefits with different groups. Directly affected residents with relocation claims, households eligible for an indirect-impact fund, a host district responsible for municipal services, and neighborhoods along transport routes are not interchangeable claimants. A fiscal rebate can recognize the host government's contribution; an income-producing concession can reflect a former settlement; statutory assistance and environmental protections respond to other legal circumstances. The adequacy of the package must be judged by its actual implementation and the effects it addresses, not by requiring identical payments to everyone in the surrounding area. But a previous agreement cannot perform the legal and environmental work of a new facility's impact determination.

The economic choice still ahead

Busan has argued that abandoning Saenggok would require difficult land acquisition, waste past expenditure and add years to the delivery of new treatment capacity. That is a serious competing explanation for the city's preference, particularly given the pressure of the 2030 restriction on direct landfilling and the announced 2033 retirement of the Myeongji incinerator. Delay can be costly when an aging plant cannot be kept available indefinitely and replacement capacity has to be purchased or transported elsewhere. The public September 2026 policy-meeting summary described a delay exceeding fifteen years for alternatives, but the summary was generated from meeting records rather than an independently inspected site-by-site schedule. Land, permits, utilities, construction and commissioning must be dated for each candidate before the cost of a longer timetable can be quantified.

Alternatives have been proposed. Kim Do-eup cited Janghang and Yulli and said 35 of 38 households in the areas concerned had indicated willingness to relocate. Such statements can be relevant to the difficulty of securing land, but they do not establish the extent of required property, technical feasibility, the consent of every affected neighborhood or a lawful route to commissioning. The decision cannot be reduced to a choice between an engineered Saenggok proposal and an uncosted idea elsewhere; neither can a proposed alternative be ruled out on a generic forecast before its site-specific conditions have been tested. Public and contracted private treatment also warrant separate consideration, particularly for the interval before a permanent plant is available. An available ton of short-term contracted capacity does not necessarily provide a dependable ton every year for the next several decades.

Comparing the options requires a common denominator: annual usable treatment capacity of the same waste stream, under the same required environmental performance, over a consistent period. Busan's successive public plans have referred to different daily ratings and capital sums, including an 800-ton design in 2025 and a 500-ton proposal described in 2026. A smaller quoted project budget does not demonstrate a saving if it also purchases less service, and a nominal daily rating does not establish performance after downtime and maintenance. Equally, the costs of the 2030–2033 transition should be assigned to the alternatives only to the extent that one option changes those costs relative to another. All choices face the underlying need to maintain lawful treatment before a new facility opens; what differs is how much each choice extends the gap and what resources that extension consumes.

Saenggok's potential advantage lies in land Busan can lawfully use, infrastructure it can technically share and a commissioning schedule it can meet. The advantage could be substantial. Its magnitude depends on remaining land and contractual obligations, the plant's operating and environmental expenses, and whether another feasible site could provide equivalent capacity at a comparable time and cost. The July 2026 testimony about slow demolition spending demonstrates why the readiness of the established site itself belongs in the appraisal. A history of investment does not eliminate the work that remains before construction can proceed.

Busan's past agreements helped keep metropolitan waste treatment operating at Saenggok and established forms of support for people who hosted it. A new incinerator would draw on some of those assets and obligations, while requiring a separate set of protections and expenditures over its own operating life. The remaining demolition work, the plant's dependable treatment capacity and the rights attached to its location will determine how much of the established site's economic advantage survives. The money already invested explains Busan's preference for Saenggok; the costs still to be incurred will determine its value.