It's hard to pull the plug on high-priced dams

BY TOMOAKI ITO, TOMOAKI HOSAKA AND FUMITO NAKAGAWA,

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Even with the completion May 4 of the Tokuyama Dam in Gifu Prefecture, debate on whether the mammoth project was actually necessary will not end anytime soon.

A total of 350 billion yen in taxpayers' money was spent to build the dam, which, at 660 million tons, has the largest water storage capacity of any such facility in Japan.

The huge cost contributed to decades of debate about whether the dam was really needed. Such debate could have long-term ramifications because the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism still has another 155 dam plans on the drawing board.

The Tokuyama Dam was completed 52 years after initial plans were drawn up.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the long history associated with building the dam, local governments in the area were not especially happy when the project was completed.

Gifu Governor Hajime Furuta said he expected the dam to help prevent flooding, but also added, "We will have to bear a tremendous financial burden."

Most of the massive dam projects were planned during the days when the nation was experiencing double-digit economic growth rates. Electricity generation and securing a source to provide water for urban areas were the main reasons given for constructing the dams.

However, with Japan in a period of low economic growth, there is less need for these big projects now.

The Tokuyama Dam is a typical example.

Infrastructure ministry officials stress the dam's effects in preventing flooding, but only about one-fifth of the dam's overall capacity is needed for that purpose.

Financial problems will continue to plague Gifu Prefecture. While it has already sunk 40 billion yen into the project, it must pay 50 billion yen over the next 23 years for the water supplied from the dam.

A high-ranking prefectural government official said: "The prefectural government's civil engineering department was like an outpost of the infrastructure ministry. Building the dam became an end in itself."

Former Gifu Governor Taku Kajiwara was a former bureau director-general at the Construction Ministry, the predecessor to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Many other officials of the former Construction Ministry also served in positions in the Gifu prefectural government in charge of dam construction and river management.

Dam construction by its nature is hugely expensive. It is incredibly difficult to cancel projects because of the cost to buy land and the amount of compensation paid to residents forced to move to make way for the dams.

In the case of Tokuyama Dam, 1,500 villagers had to move before their homes became submerged under water.

Toshiyuki Aoyama, director of the River Improvement and Management Division at the infrastructure ministry, said: "Communities where dam projects are planned are usually opposed to the project. After having finally convinced those residents to cooperate and move elsewhere, we cannot ignore community sentiment and say 'We don't need this anymore.'"

However, lawyers who have been involved with lawsuits seeking to stop dam construction said more citizen participation was needed in making decisions about such construction.

"It is impossible for central government ministry bureaucrats to bear complete responsibility and to control everything," said Kanami Akatsu, an Osaka-based lawyer. "They should allow for more participation by residents."

Akatsu put together a proposal submitted by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations last year on revising the River Law, which has been the basis for past dam construction projects.

In late April, an advisory panel to the ministry's Kinki Regional Development Bureau said that four dam projects planned for the Yodogawa river or its tributaries in the Kinki region were inappropriate. Some members of the panel are local residents who applied for membership.

A past revision of the River Law allowed for expert opinion to be sought when drawing up dam construction plans.

However, the infrastructure ministry retains the authority to decide what kind of advisory panels to set up and who can join.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations is calling for changes to make it mandatory to have residents on such panels.

Akatsu and others feel changes must be made soon because the infrastructure ministry is increasingly becoming more uncompromising.

For example, ministry officials all but said they would ignore the recommendations of the Yodogawa river system advisory panel and go ahead with the four planned dams.

Most of the dam projects that have been canceled over the past decade have been smaller ones that were to be built by prefectural governments with the help of central government subsidies.

Projects under the jurisdiction of the infrastructure ministry are rarely called off.

One example of a prefectural dam project that was canceled in 2000 was the proposed Chubu Dam in Tottori Prefecture after about 30 years had gone into its planning.

Not only were initial plans for water usage eventually reduced, but officials realized that repairing dikes would end up being a less expensive method for flood prevention than building a dam.

To alleviate opposition from local residents at the sudden change in plans, the Tottori prefectural government distributed about 10 billion yen in "compensation money" for use as subsidies to build new homes or repair existing ones.

Even with that expenditure, the prefecture still managed to save 9 billion yen, about half of the original construction expense estimate.

Yoshihiro Katayama was the Tottori governor who made the decision to cancel the dam project.

"We had a sense of crisis that left unchanged, the overall fiscal condition of the local governments would fall into a serious situation," Katayama said. "We could not afford to say, 'We don't know how much it will end up costing, but let's go ahead with the project anyway.'"(IHT/Asahi: May 16,2008)