지방자치단체의 물의 사용에 관한 권리

This study examines the current water management system from an angle of local autonomy aiming at finding how to strengthen the power of municipalities on the water management. Water is essential not only for lifes including human being but also for economic development as water resources. Therefore, it is necessary to control by administrative department. but it is question who has the right of water management between the central government and local government. Our Constitution §117 guarantees local government the right of autonomy. Decentralization is essential to ideal local autonomy, and consequently it is a legal order. In Korea, dictatorship and government-led industrialization brought about a concentration of national power in central government. There is similarity in water management system because of country-leading system for stable water using to support growth of economy boosted. In the current water management system, there are several departments, which handle various water issues such as quantity, quality and disaster management separately according to their purpose. They are all the administrative machinery of a state, on the other hand the local government is not comprised in that. In addition, numbers of laws have been enacted to contend with these issues. Those complicated management system is at the bottom of the disutility in water management. Nowadays, paradigms for water management are need to change and changing to integrated system by the basin. In conclusion, for the appropriate water management, it is desirable to regulate the use of water not by the civil law but by the public law from the light of public interest, and to manage in integrated system, and to strengthen the power of municipalities on the water management. It must always be borne in mind, local autonomy is not simple administrative system but national decentralized ruling system and legal principle for actualization of democracy.