Saemangeum Seawall

World's longest man made dyke

The Saemangeum Seawall (hangul=새만금 방조제), on the south west coast of the Korean peninsula, is the world's longest man made dyke, measuring It runs between two headlands, and separates the Yellow Sea and the former Saemangeum estuary. It was built to reclaim land for both agriculture and urban uses, including industrial uses, and 401 km2 of the estuary was planned to be developed into an artificial lake (118 km2) and relaimed land (283 km2 ) that would provide nearly 10% of South Korea's total rice production. which should both prevent the future loss of wetlands and help with wetland restoration. The construction of the Saemangeum Seawall caused controversy from the moment it was announced as environmental groups protested against the impact of the dyke on the local environment. Supreme Court challenges in 1999 and 2005 led to temporary production stoppages but ultimately failed to stop the project. Major construction was completed in April 2006, with the seawall longer than the Afsluitdijk in the IJsselmeer, the Netherlands, previously the longest seawall dyke in the world. With remaining minor construction and inspection finished, the seawall was officially opened to the public on 27 April 2010. Then South Korean president Lee Myung Bak commented that Saemangeum would be "the kernel and the gateway of South Korea's west coast industrial belt" and was "another effort by us for low carbon and green growth, along with the four rivers project". A ceremony was held in Saemangeum the same day, with cabinet officials, politicians and delegates from other countries. as of 2019 a floating solar PV plant of 2.1 GW capacity was planned using the coastal reservoir area of the Saemangeum Seawall.

The enclosure of the estuary and its bay by the dyke has had major environmental impacts. It has destroyed 401 square kilometres of mudflats, which many thousands of migratory shore birds using the East Asian Australasian Flyway once used as a stopover site before continuing their migration south to Australasia, and thus is a factor in the major decline of birds such as the Far Eastern Curlew. The dyke has changed both the estuarine tidal system inside the dyke and the coastal marine environment outside the dyke. Following completion of the dyke, red tides, hypoxia and coastal erosion/deposition have occurred successively. (where the abundance and biomass of various species of intertidal fauna were measured in 2005) aimed at giving baseline data on the "distribution of benthic macrofauna for future monitoring" and at "identifying the relative importance of environmental variables that explain faunal zonation". This study also hoped to give a basis for wetland restoration. have documented environmental changes together with benthic faunal changes and concluded that tidal damping has greatly decreased benthic fauna species number and density, that the halophyte community has been greatly affected, that the shellfish catch has been reduced and that there have been increases in organophosphorus and organochloride pesticides in both seawater and sediments, changes in shorebird populations and massive erosion near the dyke openings. The Saemangeum project is considered to be perhaps the worst example of a massive tidal land reclamation project, which "inevitably destroys the natural and productive ecosystem of tidal flats".