This year the Ministry of Environment(MOE) made a fifth amendment to the Sewerage Act, which was enacted in August 1966. The first objective of this amendment is to introduce small public sewerage system that is designed to treat wastewater produced in rural areas. Before small public sewerage system was introduced to the Act through this amendment, only urban areas were covered by public sewerage system. Because small sewerage system was introduced, wastewater generated in urban areas as well as rural areas can now be treated by public sewage treatment plants. In addition to this, some authorities on sewerage affairs were moved from the MOE to local governments by this amendment in order to enhance the power and responsibility of local governments in relation to sewerage affairs. Also, this amendment enabled local governments to entrust the authority to establish and manage sewage treatment plants to private companies, and enabled the MOE to organize an advisory committee on sewerage to review economic and technical aspects ofsewage treatment plants. This amendment went into effect September 8, 1997.

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.

Sewage sludge produced in Korea was 1,275,800 tons (dewatered sludge cake) per year in 1996, which is 3,495 tons per day, 0.303% of 11,526,100 tons per day of sewage treated in 79 sewage treatment plants. Sludge production has been and will be increasing in accordance with construction of new facilities for sewage treatment. Most of the sludge is currently disposed by landfill and ocean dumping, but it is becoming difficult to find suitable sites for landfill, particularly in big cities such as Seoul. In addition, rapid increase of landfill cost is anticipated in a near future. Current trend for sludge disposal in advanced countries is land application. Over the past 10 to 20 years in the United States, sludge management practices have changed significantly, moving from disposal to beneficial use. They use biosolid for utilization instead of sludge for disposal. Under the Clean Water Act of 1972, amended in 1987 by Congress, the U.S. EPA was required to develop regulations for the use and disposal of sewage sludge. The EPA assessed the potential for pollutants in sewage sludge to affect public health and the environment through a number of different routes of exposure. The Agency also assessed the potential risk to human health through contamination of drinking water sources or surface water when sludge is disposed on land. The Final Rules were signed by the EPA Administrator and were published (Federal Register, 1993). These rules state that sewage sludge shall not be applied to land if the concentration of any pollutant in the sludge exceeds the ceiling concentration. In addition, the cumulative loading rate for each pollutant shall not exceed the cumulative pollutant loading rate nor should the concentration of each pollutant in the sludge exceed the monthly average concentration for the pollutant. The annual pollutant loading rate generally applies to applications of sewage sludge on agricultural lands. The most popular beneficial use of sewage sludge is land application. The sludge has to be stabilized for appling to land. One of the stabilization process for sewage sludge is lime stabilization process. The stabilization process is consisted of the stabilizing process and the drying process. Stabilization reactor can be a drum type reactor in which a crossed mixer is equipped. The additive agents are a very reactive mixture of calcium oxide and others. The stabilized sludge is dried in sun drier or rotary kiln.