Illegal dumping by contractors…Huge pile of garbage in Ishioka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, “15,000 m3 of bizarre industrial waste,” powerful aerial photo

Huge 8-meter-high trash pile along a school road.

A huge pile of trash along the prefectural road. It is over 250 meters long.

The bizarre scene is spread out in a rural area of Ishioka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, where there is also an elementary school nearby. The site is covered with plastic trash, and countless resin bags have deteriorated and torn, and some of the contents are sticking out.

The garbage began to be carried into the former materials storage area about four years ago. Now they are piled up more than 8 meters high, and the fence is leaning. The prefectural road is also a route to an elementary school about 1 km away, so if the trash collapses when children pass by, it could cause a major accident.

The pile of trash is the largest industrial waste dumping site in recent years. Contractors and individuals have brought in waste from outside the prefecture, claiming that it is raw material for recycled products, and the amount of waste reaches 15,000 m3 (about the equivalent of 35 25 m pools). An official from the Waste Regulation Division of the Ibaraki Prefectural Government’s Department of Citizens’ Living Environment explains, “The amount of waste stored is the largest in the world.

The amount of waste in storage exceeds the upper limit set by the Industrial Waste Disposal Law, and the pile of waste is threatening to collapse on the prefectural road. Residents in the area have repeatedly asked us to remove the waste as soon as possible because of the danger of it collapsing.

Taxpayers’ money is being pumped into the project due to administrative negligence…

The site has been a garbage dump since before and after the previous owner abandoned his rights. In March of last year, the prefectural government issued an order to the garbage custodian to remove all of the garbage within one year, but only about 20% of the garbage was removed. Because of the fear of disruption to the residents’ lives, the prefectural government decided to carry out an administrative subrogation in September of this year to force the removal of the garbage.

The removal cost was 330 million yen, and removal began on September 24. Excluding support from the Industrial Waste Management Promotion Foundation and tax subsidies from the national government, the actual cost to the prefecture will be 19.8 million yen.

Couldn’t the situation have been prevented before the taxpayers’ money was used to pay for it? Lawyer Masato Murata, an expert on industrial waste issues, points out, “The amount of waste plastic piled up to this point is not so large.

It is quite a rare case, even nationwide, for waste plastic to accumulate to this level. It took too long to issue the action order. If an improvement order had been issued immediately after the improper storage was discovered, this situation could have been avoided. The fact that the resulting removal costs amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars can be said to be negligence on the part of the administration.”

A huge pile of trash was created by the negligent handling of the situation. The entire pile is scheduled to be removed in January of next year.

From the October 11, 2024 issue of FRIDAY