Kirk here. I’m enjoying a pleasant late-afternoon breeze as I write this but it won’t be long before we enter the rainy season, which overlaps with typhoon season. Those seasons bring increased risk of flooding which is the subject of this article.
It includes a fairly long section on the Kawabegawa dam project, which was planned, then cancelled, and is now planned again to prevent catastrophic flooding in the Hitoyoshi area. I’m pretty sure that the article is mistaken in saying that “plans emerged to build a dam upstream on the Kuma River” because the plans are for the Kawabegawa River, which feeds into the Kuma River (Kumagawa) and causes it to flood – but is a different river. Otherwise, I think the summary in the article is pretty good:
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In the aftermath of torrential rains that hit Kumamoto Prefecture in July 2020, plans emerged to build a dam upstream on the Kuma River. The project did not go ahead due to concerns about the impact on the ecosystem and criticism that the huge cost would be wasteful.
In 2008, Kumamoto Gov. Ikuo Kabashima had demanded a blanket withdrawal of the dam project. In 2009, with the Democratic Party of Japan in power nationally, he announced that construction had been suspended. The DPJ administration was critical of large-scale public works projects and promoted what it called a “from concrete to people” policy in which budgetary outlays were to be shifted from public works to welfare programs. Eleven years on, however, Kumamoto was inflicted with damage that cost lives, causing Gov. Kabashima to approve the construction of dams. “Global warming,” he said, “has changed the way rain falls.”
But the cost of another round of flood control projects across Japan remains prohibitive. Kumamoto’s flood hazard has highlighted a challenge: How can Japan balance its national finances?
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