Subject: [cwj 90] Tokyo City Government to Impound Land to Expand Waste Disposal Facility
From: "Olivier Hoedeman" <paxaran@antenna.nl> (by way of Corporate Watch in Japanese <cwj@corpwatch.org>)
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 14:01:10 -0700
Seq: 90

International Environment Reporter

Volume 23 Number 18 Wednesday, August 30, 2000 Page 672=20
ISSN 1522-4090 News

Waste Management=20

Tokyo City Government to Impound Land to Expand Waste Disposal Facility


TOKYO--The Tokyo municipal government, faced with dwindling waste disposal
capacity, has decided to impound tracts of land beginning in early October
to expand a waste disposal facility currently in operation.

The owners of the land oppose the decision, saying it is illegal and
environmentally damaging (23 INER 456, 6/7/00).

The row is drawing national attention as other municipalities and residents
are increasingly confronted with similar problems. Like Tokyo,
municipalities in urban areas are in desperate need of securing waste
disposal sites as their landfill and incineration capacities--especially
the former--are being exhausted in response to increases in waste=
 generation.

But residents are concerned that acquiescing on construction of waste
facilities may turn their communities into dumpsites like Teshima, Kagawa
Prefecture, causing hazardous chemical leakage to their water, soil, and
air (23 INER 470, 6/7/00).

The Tokyo site is called the Futatsuzuka Waste Processing Facility, 59.1
hectares (146 acres) of land located in Hinode Town, about 30 miles west of
central Tokyo. Twenty-seven Tokyo municipalities are transporting a total
of 650 tons of waste--incinerated ash and shredded plastics--to the site
per day.

Waste transport has been in operation since January 1998, but the 27
municipalities decided to build an additional facility for landfill--a hole
with a huge plastic sheet spread on its walls to prevent leakage--because
the current site will become full in less than three years.

"We were told that the Tokyo government plans to hand to us a court
document to impound our land soon and that it will start doing it from Oct.
10," Yutaka Osawa, administrator of the Hinode-no-mori opposition movement
organizing 2,800 residents and environmentalists, told BNA Aug. 14.

Movement members Aug. 17 visited the Tokyo City Hall, the Construction,
Health and Welfare, and Labor ministries, and the Environment Agency,
asking them to prod Tokyo to cancel its decision to impound the land, Osawa
said in a telephone interview that day from Hinode where he is camping out.


--By Toshio Aritake

Copyright =A9 2000 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.,=20
Washington D.C.

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