Abstract

In Korea, there are 1,474 thousand pumping wells nationwide which account for about 12% of total water use in 2012.
As much as 39 hundred million tons of groundwater were used while 333 hundred million tons of total water were supplied
in 2012. Because the water management authority projects that water demand will exceed supply by 2021, the
authority is planning to extensively expand groundwater use in accordance with economic feasibility. Using the basic
frameworks of cost-benefit analyses of the World Bank and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), the
objective of this study is to examine the costs and benefits of the expansion of Korea’s groundwater extraction through
pumping wells. We conclude that the BC ratio of the groundwater pumping wells is 2.98. This signifies that the benefits
are 2.98 times higher than the costs. The benefits include use and non-use values of pumping wells while the costs include
the installation and maintenance of new wells, in addition to the restoration and pollution costs of abandoned wells, as
well as fees for water quality tests, etc.

Keywords pumping well, cost-benefit analysis, groundwater