JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 47 из 270The central and localgovernments simply have no idea how to test for or dispose of toxic chemicals. The reason that waste disposal after the Kobe earthquake took place in such confusion was that the agencies in charge didn't know anything about waste incineration; they didn't know about shields; they didn't know how to monitor toxic discharges.
In September 1994, the Environment Agency announced tightened regulations on industrial-waste-disposal sites. Current rules, unchanged since 1977, did not cover chemicals produced in the 1990s, and disposal sites were still mostly unprotected holes in the ground, without waterproofing, and with no devices to process leachate. There are 1,400 such unprotected disposal pits, representing more than half of all reported industrial-waste sites in Japan. (There are tens of thousands of unreported sites.) What were the Environment Agency's «tightened regulations»? A study of twenty sites over several years.
This lack of environmental technology became vividly clear on January 2, 1997, when the Russian tanker Nakhodka, carrying 133,000 barrels of oil, ran aground and split in half off the coast of Ishikawa Prefecture, west of Tokyo. Although bioremediation (using microbes to break oil down into water and CO 2 ) has been in standard use as a means of cleaning up oil spills in other parts of the world since the 1980s, the Japanese government had not yet approved its use. The Environment Agency therefore did not apply microbes to the 300-meter oil slick, and untold damage to marine life in the region resulted. Finally, a group of fishermen took matters into their own hands and used a small supply of American-manufactured microbes on what they said was «an experimental basis.»
Besides bioremediation, another common technique to contain oil spills is to have surfactant sprayed by airplanes and vessels or to have the oil that reaches the surface burned. Neither of these technologies was available in Japan. Although the tanker ran aground in an established tanker lane, there were no disaster plans in place and no large oil-recovery vessels stationed in the Sea of Japan. One had to sail all the way from Japan's Pacific coast, which took days. The actor Kevin Costner was moved to donate $700,000 of high-tech cleanup devices to the affected areas. And in the end farm women scooped oil off the beaches with hishaku, old-style wooden ladles. As Yamada Tatsuya reported in the Asahi Evening News, « This time the old-fashioned hishaku ladles – something of a museum piece in our modern society – suddenly became a symbol of the cleanup effort.
In September 1994, the Environment Agency announced tightened regulations on industrial-waste-disposal sites. Current rules, unchanged since 1977, did not cover chemicals produced in the 1990s, and disposal sites were still mostly unprotected holes in the ground, without waterproofing, and with no devices to process leachate. There are 1,400 such unprotected disposal pits, representing more than half of all reported industrial-waste sites in Japan. (There are tens of thousands of unreported sites.) What were the Environment Agency's «tightened regulations»? A study of twenty sites over several years.
This lack of environmental technology became vividly clear on January 2, 1997, when the Russian tanker Nakhodka, carrying 133,000 barrels of oil, ran aground and split in half off the coast of Ishikawa Prefecture, west of Tokyo. Although bioremediation (using microbes to break oil down into water and CO 2 ) has been in standard use as a means of cleaning up oil spills in other parts of the world since the 1980s, the Japanese government had not yet approved its use. The Environment Agency therefore did not apply microbes to the 300-meter oil slick, and untold damage to marine life in the region resulted. Finally, a group of fishermen took matters into their own hands and used a small supply of American-manufactured microbes on what they said was «an experimental basis.»
Besides bioremediation, another common technique to contain oil spills is to have surfactant sprayed by airplanes and vessels or to have the oil that reaches the surface burned. Neither of these technologies was available in Japan. Although the tanker ran aground in an established tanker lane, there were no disaster plans in place and no large oil-recovery vessels stationed in the Sea of Japan. One had to sail all the way from Japan's Pacific coast, which took days. The actor Kevin Costner was moved to donate $700,000 of high-tech cleanup devices to the affected areas. And in the end farm women scooped oil off the beaches with hishaku, old-style wooden ladles. As Yamada Tatsuya reported in the Asahi Evening News, « This time the old-fashioned hishaku ladles – something of a museum piece in our modern society – suddenly became a symbol of the cleanup effort.