Abstract
The purpose of this study is to assess the environmental carrying capacity of Chongju City for the environmental management and the urban growth management. The urban environmental carrying capacity assessment of the city by the index of ecological footprint(EF), shows that the ecosystem of the city has been overloaded and most of the deficiencies has come from outside of the city. The EF index, the area of land per capita required for production and consumption in the city, was 1.731 ha per capita in 1989 and 1.901 ha per capita in 1999. On the other side, the ecologically productive land is 0.0175 ha per capita. It means that every citizen owes 1.88 ha per capita to the ecosystem in 1999. The land consumption of the city has increased by 0.1705 ha per capita during the last 10 years. The capacity of infrastructure and the service supply estimated by the Onishi model does not exceed the demand of the city in 1999. But the rapidly increasing population and fast urban growth need the expansion of the capacity. The water supply capacity of the city appears to be sufficient in 1999, but the water supply demand will increase in the future. The capacity of sewage treatment facilities seems to be sufficient, but the higher level of sewage treatment facilities should be adopted for the improvement of water quality as the generation of sewage will increase and its characteristics will also make the wastewater treatment difficult. Due to the decrease of solid waste generated, the land fill capacity for solid waste disposal is not insufficient at present, but the capacity will be saturated in the near future. Therefore, the scientific management system of solid wastes should be introduced. The air quality of the city meets both the national air quality standard and WHO recommendation standard, but the strong regulation and control of automobile emission gas such as CO, $CO_2$, NOx and HC is required for clean air.
