Reconstruction work this fiscal year is expected to start on only 18 kilometers of the 190 km of levees destroyed by last year’s tsunami in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, according to an Asahi Shimbun survey.
Reconstruction work this fiscal year is expected to start on only 18 kilometers of the 190 km of levees destroyed by last year’s tsunami in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, according to an Asahi Shimbun survey.
The central government had planned to start rebuilding 30 percent of the levees this fiscal year, which ends in March, with the goal of completing the restoration work within five years.
But technical problems, including deformations in the landscape caused by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, and difficulties obtaining the consent of local residents, have delayed progress.
The levee reconstruction work is expected to cost 725.5 billion yen ($8.93 billion), approaching the size of the budget of about 800 billion yen to relocate 20,000 homes from coastal areas to higher ground.
But the central government has yet to include most of the costs for levee repairs into the national budget.
The Asahi Shimbun looked into the situation surrounding levee reconstruction work by talking to officials at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
The coasts of the three prefectures, which manage the levees, are split into 515 areas. Levee reconstruction work will be conducted in 375 areas, excluding the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Work has already started or is scheduled to begin in 26 areas, including 12 areas with 15.24 km of levees in Miyagi Prefecture, five areas with 0.72 km of levees in Iwate Prefecture, and nine areas with 1.84 km of levees in Fukushima Prefecture.
Miyagi Prefecture intends to rebuild levees in 209 areas in total, but has yet to come up with solid plans. Iwate Prefecture has 109 areas and Fukushima Prefecture has 57.
Ninety percent of the levees in the rebuilding project will be heightened by up to 10 meters or more. Their widths will also be expanded, although this will require buying additional land plots.
“The acquisitions are facing trouble because ground-level declines have made it hard to identify property lines,” a Miyagi prefectural government official said.
An official in Iwate Prefecture said it is still waiting for the central government to announce the standards for levee strength.
“We cannot move on to designing the levees,” the official said.
Many residents oppose the higher levees because they do not want them to block their view of the sea--and potential tsunami. In some areas, residents have yet to reach a consensus on the rebuilding plans.
Those delays could affect entire reconstruction programs in devastated areas. Based on the levee plan, the programs intend to raise the ground level in certain flooded areas before homes are rebuilt.