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. FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Corporate Watch in Japanese is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. ------------------------------------- Corporate Watch in Japanese Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) P.O. Box 29344 San Francisco, CA 94129 USA Tel: 1-415-561-6472 Fax: 1-415-561-6493 Email: cwj@corpwatch.org URL: http://www.corpwatch-jp.org ------------------------------------- ______________________ The Corporate Watch in Japanese http://www.corpwatch.org/japan (CWJ) mailing list is a moderated email list in English designed to connect activists campaigning against Japanese corporations and investments around the world. * To unsubscribe from the CWJ mailing list, send an email to majordomo@jca.apc.org with text "unsubscribe cwj". To subscribe to the CWJ mailing list, send a message to majordomo@jca.apc.org with the text "subscribe cwj" * The CWJ mailing list is NOT intended for wide distribution. If you would like to post messages from this list somewhere else, we ask that you first contact us at cwj@corpwatch.org ______________________