Get local govts on board to help debris removal
Efforts to remove the colossal piles of destroyed houses and debris left by the Great East Japan Earthquake are making little headway.
Normally, debris would be collected and taken to a storage depot, where it would be separated into different kinds of waste. Any refuse that cannot be recycled is incinerated and buried. But after the devastation wrought by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, many stricken areas do not even have sites that could be used as temporary storage depots.
Waste disposal is, in principle, done by city, town and village governments. But the sheer quantity of debris left behind by last month's disaster is simply too large for individual municipalities to handle.
We think the government should not leave debris removal up to disaster-hit regions, but instead formulate a framework of extensive collaboration among local authorities so the debris removal can be completed as quickly as possible.
Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures are lying under an estimated 25 million tons of debris. This is 1.7 times as much rubble as had to be removed after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, a job that took three years to complete.
This estimate only includes the debris of houses and other buildings wrecked in the catastrophe. Including the thousands of vehicles and boats left stranded onshore by the tsunami would push this staggering figure even higher.
The government has committed itself to paying the entire cost of debris disposal. But this alone will not be enough.
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Govt must fund entire costs
First, the government should secure places to temporarily store debris. Debris in disaster-hit areas is often being stored at the same sites as temporary shelters, resulting in a severe shortage of debris storage space. Even public areas such as parks are already full and cannot hold any more debris.
Personnel shifting and removing debris have been painstakingly sifting through the mountains of debris to find photo albums and other items with deep sentimental value to disaster victims. They face the tricky task of deciding whether these items are valuable and should be kept and returned to their owners, or thrown back on the heap.
Removing houses, boats and motor vehicles requires, in principle, approval from their owners. Consequently, local authorities are accelerating procedures to get debris owners to agree to have these possessions removed.
In many instances, however, the authorities are struggling to locate these owners. And even when they are identified, some want the debris preserved, which slows the removal process down even further.
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Clearer guidelines needed
The government has issued guidelines that empower local authorities to remove destroyed homes, boats and vehicles without their owners' permission. However, the final decision on whether to seek permission from the owners is left up to the local governments. Under the circumstances, many local authorities are caught in two minds about how to proceed.
We think the government should consider providing local authorities with subsidies so they can hire property assessors.
Many coastal areas suffered ground subsidence during last month's violent earthquake. One way to revive these areas would be to use concrete and other chunks of debris as landfill, and to plant forests and windbreaks to help strengthen the ground.
After the Great Hanshin Earthquake, the Hyogo prefectural government used much of the wreckage for land reclamation in coastal areas of Kobe and other cities, and entrusted part of debris removal to other local governments.
However, the Sanriku region, the hardest hit in last month's disaster, has few shallow shorelines, which all but rules out the option of reclaiming land there with debris.
Some badly affected areas will have to ship some debris to Hokkaido, Kanto and other regions for final disposal. The government should do everything it can to get local authorities across the country to join the effort to clean up debris left by the disaster.
Govt must provide info on expanded evacuation
While no prospects are in sight that the troubled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant might be brought under control, the government is set to order people living in newly designated areas to evacuate due to radioactive contamination.
The decision came because contamination with high levels of radioactive materials was detected in some areas outside the evacuation and stay-indoors zones the government previously had set.
It is said the level of exposure to radiation would exceed 20 millisieverts a year--the limit of international safety standards--if people stayed in the newly designated areas for a long time.
The areas include Iitatemura, Fukushima Prefecture, which is northwest of the nuclear power plant. Some of these areas are more than 30 kilometers from the plant, but the wind likely has carried radioactive materials leaked from damaged reactors at the plant over a considerable period of time.
The government has said residents in the targeted areas should evacuate within a month or so. This measure is in line with an advisory issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency. We hope it will be implemented smoothly.
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What are the radiation risks?
What risks to people's health will radioactive contamination cause? Where should people evacuate and how can they lead their daily lives after evacuation? How long will people remain unable to return home?
Given these concerns shared by local residents, the government should thoroughly and carefully explain what it can predict. For example, depending on the level of contamination, it may be possible for people to live safely in those areas after taking such measures as removing contaminated soil.
The government previously ordered people living within a 20-kilometer radius of the nuclear plant to evacuate and advised those in areas between the 20-kilometer zone and a 30-kilometer radius to stay indoors. These measures were taken against a possible leak of a huge amount of radioactive materials if reactors at the plant melted down.
The expansion of the evacuation areas indicates the amount of radioactive materials released since the outbreak of the accidents at the nuclear plant already is considerable. The plant must urgently be brought under control to prevent the contamination from worsening to more serious levels.
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No grasp of situation
The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the nuclear plant, do not even have an accurate grasp on who has evacuated to where under evacuation orders. Support for their daily necessities has been almost entirely left in the hands of local governments.
Combined with people targeted for the latest evacuation, the number of people who have left or will have to leave their homes is expected to total more than 100,000. They must be provided with sufficient support for their daily needs. And TEPCO should promptly pay provisional compensation to people affected by the accident.
Some evacuees from Fukushima Prefecture have reportedly been refused accommodation at inns and subjected to discriminatory verbal abuse. These kinds of things are unforgivable.
In the case of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in the former Soviet Union 25 years ago, IAEA and others said that disrupted daily lives and social anxiety negatively affected the health of residents living near the nuclear plant.
The authorities also said it is vital for a government concerned to gain public trust through adequate information disclosure and dialogue with affected residents.
We should draw a lesson from this.
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