Mountains of Debris Stand in the Way of Quake Reconstruction

submitted by Samuel Bendett

asahi.com - August 17, 2011

The tsunami that followed the Great East Japan Earthquake left 22 million tons of debris and rubble scattered across three prefectures in the Tohoku region. No real steps toward restoration can be taken until it is removed. Last month, Prime Minister Naoto Kan's administration at long last introduced a bill to the Diet to place the national government in direct control of the cleanup. Will concentrated efforts to remove the debris now finally get underway?

At the end of June, disaster experts, representatives from the Environment Ministry and officials from affected municipal governments gathered at a conference in Sendai for a meeting on how to dispose of the debris. The gathering, organized by Japan Society of Material Cycles and Wast Management, a scientific group studying the debris problem, attracted 150 people, well above expected numbers, forcing organizers to change the venue to a larger room.

During the Q&A session, municipal government personnel peppered representatives from the environment ministry, which is responsible for dealing with the debris problem, with questions concerning the cleanup.

What is going to be done with the enormous amount of rubble? That disaster-effected municipalities have a strong interest in what the national government is thinking is understandable. Under current law, they are unquestionably the ones responsible for disposing of debris resulting from any calamity.

In reality, however, municipalities are also overwhelmed with other restoration and reconstruction tasks.

According to a number of officials, affected municipalities are starting to be inundated with calls from some private contractors requesting that they be entrusted with the cleanup work. The frequency of calls is so great that it is beginning to interfere with routine work at some local government offices. Some offices are even receiving cleanup proposals from companies in China and the United States. The perception that the cleanup will be a lucrative business opportunity is growing.

LOCAL OR NATIONAL, WHICH GOVERNMENT SHOULD TAKE CONTROL?

Immediately following the earthquake, the Kan administration determined that it would be difficult to leave cleanup efforts solely in the hands of local governments. As a result they worked out a basic three-point policy. One, the national government would cover a substantial portion of the cleanup costs. Two, municipal governments could delegate the cleanup work to their respective prefectural governments. And three, municipal governments not affected by the disaster would cooperate with the cleanup, making it a nationwide undertaking.

The administration's policy is based upon establishing special measures within the framework of existing laws. However, some are calling for new laws, saying the cleanup should be under the direct jurisdiction of the national government.

One such person calling for direct national government control is Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, 65. "Cleaning up the debris is the responsibility of the local governments, but in reality they don't have the capacity to do it," he said on a TV news program in May. "That's why I've been saying we also have to think about having the Ministry of Environment create a new bill. And that is being done."

In response, then Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto, 60, took a cautious stance, stating at a news conference, "For now, a revision to the law is not expected. Basically, it is the municipal or prefectural governments who are the principal actors." Noting the inconsistency surrounding the issue within the Cabinet, irritated local governments affected by the disaster began calling on the national government to "quickly take direct control."

In July, four opposition parties, including the Liberal Democrats, jointly submitted a bill to the Diet clearly specifying that the national government take direct control and bear all costs for the cleanup. Taking the lead in compiling the bill was Lower House member and chair of the Liberal Democratic Party Earthquake Disaster Emergency Response Project Team, Yasuhiro Ozato, 52.

Ozato, whose father Sadatoshi, 80, was the minister in charge of earthquake disaster countermeasures at the time of the Great Hanshin earthquake, criticized the government saying, "The heart of the government's response to the earthquake has just been a flurry of special legislation and measures. The reason the current administration is slow to make decisions is due to a lack of leadership transcending not only the Environment Ministry, but the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and other ministries and government offices as well."

However, according to government officials, there was a shared consensus within the administration at an early stage that the only course of action was for the national government to take direct control.

Why then have matters taken so long? It's been pointed out that the inherent complexity and difficulty of disposing of the disaster debris themselves have played a part.

"It's a fact that some places are making progress with the disposal while others are not. This is due to an infinite variety of factors such as local topography and the degree of damage suffered," said Takeshi Hidaka, 45, parliamentary secretary of the environment who is in charge of the debris disposal.

Hidaka, who lived in Iwate Prefecture when he worked as a secretary for Ichiro Ozawa, the former secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, has visited 17 municipalities in six prefectures that have been affected by the disaster.

He said that in some towns and villages with little flat land, priority was being placed on constructing temporary housing making it difficult to find locations for temporary debris storage. He also noted that personal items were mixed in with the debris, and much more importantly, more than 7,000 people were still unaccounted for, meaning it was necessary to proceed very carefully with the debris disposal.

It is also necessary to consider the economy of the stricken areas. "The environment ministry has received requests from municipalities in afflicted areas debris disposal be handled by local contractors," said one cabinet minister.

But if they are aiming for efficiency, there is a high probability that the government will give a blanket order to a large-scale general contractor. That would snatch employment away from local small-and-medium-sized businesses. While some municipalities have the capacity to deal with the rubble, it is clearly evident that many do not, resulting in the materialization of the plan for the national government to take control of the situation.

It is also no easy task getting municipal governments in other parts of Japan not affected by the disaster to cooperate and accept debris in their jurisdictions in line with the national government's "nationwide undertaking" vision for the cleanup.

When the environment ministry contacted all municipal governments and special district authorities across Japan, 572 said they would be willing to accept debris from the disaster areas. The maximum amount they would be able to process annually is approximately 4.88 million tons (as of the end of June). That number is less than one quarter of the estimated 22 million tons of debris generated by the disaster. The municipalities accepting the debris also have to consider the opinions of local residents. In April, when Kawasaki said it was considering accepting debris for processing, the city office received a large number of complaints from residents who mistakenly thought the city was agreeing to accept radioactive waste.

UNFORESEEN OR NOT?

In retrospect, however, we know that Japan has repeatedly suffered from natural disasters, and on each of those occasions it has disposed of the resulting debris. Even though the scale of this most recent disaster was unprecedented, was the challenge associated with cleaning up the debris really "unforeseen?"

For example, the need to have debris disposal dealt with over a "wide-area" (a nationwide undertaking) was first pointed out by the government itself more than 10 years ago.

Government guidelines compiled by the then Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1998 after the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which generated 19.8 million tons of debris and rubble in Hyogo Prefecture, refer to this need:

"Through measures such as establishing a system of mutual cooperation among neighboring municipalities, stockpiling equipment and machinery needed for dealing with the disposal of waste, and creating a site plan detailing temporary storage areas for debris, it is necessary to secure in advance an emergency response structure capable of disposing of waste in times of earthquake disasters." (Portions omitted)

Also in 2005, in response to the torrential rains in Niigata and other areas, the environment ministry compiled Flood Waste Management Guidelines, in which it indicated the necessity of "maintaining a 'wide-area' cooperative structure."

The Guidelines for Maintaining a Wide-Area Structure Regarding the Disposal of Waste Resulting from Disaster, compiled by the environment ministry in March 2010, noted that "a national response is required for large-scale disasters, and along with strengthening cooperation between national and prefectural/municipal level governments, it is necessary to establish a cooperative system across a 'wide area.'"

However, nothing more concrete than these guidelines has evolved. "The guidelines are abstract and of no use to municipalities in making disaster plans for their cities and towns. They have not been revised to reflect experiences gained in dealing with disasters," points out Nagahisa Hirayama, 40, a special associate professor in urban environmental engineering at Kyoto University.

One example of more effective guidelines being offered by Hirayama is the Debris Management Guide drawn up and published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States.

After the September 11 simultaneous terrorist attacks, FEMA was concentrating its efforts on antiterrorist measures. However, its response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005 was criticized as being slow, and as a result of some internal reflection, it has been devoting more effort to disaster response in recent years.

The 16-chapter FEMA guide is intended for NGOs and local level governments and offers detailed guidelines pertaining to debris removal, including guidelines on how to handle debris according to type, such as vegetative debris, rubble from buildings, and hazardous materials. It is freely available on the agency's website where it may be viewed or downloaded for printing. The U.S. federal government will cover the cost of removal if debris is removed and disposed of according to processes set forth in the guidelines.

Japan has no equivalent manual, and it took the government more than two months after the earthquake to offer guidelines on how to handle debris; as such, there was a lot of confusion at the disaster sites.

With the introduction of the bill seeking to put direct control of the cleanup process under the jurisdiction of the national government at the request of affected municipalities, it is hoped that the government will get up to speed in the handling of the debris.

However, the government is not planning to include in its 'wide-area' processing and debris disposal, debris from Fukushima Prefecture that is feared contaminated with radioactive material from the nuclear accident. Moving it outside of the prefecture would prove difficult, and there is a long road ahead before this debris, which suffered from both natural and man-made disasters, can be properly processed.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201108160301.html