Mark Twain is said to have written, “Whisky is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Having grown up in the American southwest, I can appreciate the sentiment: one cannot have the former without the latter.
The Daiso Dam (大蘇ダム - not the 100 yen shop - in fact, costs over its 40-year journey from conception to completion ballooned 5.5 times to some 72 billion yen even while the amount of water provided is expected to be a mere 10% of iinitial projections), located in Ubayama Mura, Aso, is slated to open next year, with the reservoir water shared between Kumamoto and Oita (the latter via pipe) and then divided between water-hungry farmers and municipalities. The Aso region was promised 261 hectares (the article doesn’t indicate units; in th US, we use water-feet, the amount of water required to fill a cubic feet of space), but infrastructure for just 40 hectares for highland farming and 30 hectares for Aso City has been installed. As usual, Aso is getting screwed.
Let the water fights begin. - Wlliam
