One man's back supporting Rausu's water: The silence and frayed edges of Hokkaido's waterways

One man's back supporting Rausu's water: The silence and frayed edges of Hokkaido's waterways

Hokkaido's waterworks system is quietly but surely moving toward its limits. The steel and concrete networks that once supported our daily lives are now being subjected to a wave of deterioration, and replacement is not keeping pace. Many of the waterworks facilities constructed during the period of rapid economic growth have long since passed the end of their useful life, and deteriorating pipelines are now a breeding ground for damage and leaks. Some estimates suggest that the cost of renewing water supply facilities in 2038 will be 15 times the current level, and not many municipalities in Hokkaido have the finances to bear the weight of such an increase.

In terms of finances, depopulation and population decline are having a serious impact. With fewer people, less water can be sold. Combined with the growing awareness of water conservation, water rate revenues continue to decline. Municipalities that continue to maintain and repair their facilities, without being able to renew them, are unable to hide their exhaustion. The city of Akabira is being warned that it will be impossible to replace its aging facilities unless it revises its water rates. However, many residents are cautious about increasing the burden on them, and the question of how to strike a balance between business and residents' lives remains unanswered.

And now, the most serious problem for the future of waterworks is the lack of personnel. Without technical staff, there will be no eyes to examine the condition of the facilities, and the hands to make decisions will stop. In Rausu, a small town in Hokkaido, there has been no official waterworks technical staff for about eight years. However, this does not mean that there was no staff at all. In fact, there was only one staff member who silently took on the enormous responsibility. His hand barely kept the water system running. However, his work was not supported by the system, but depended almost entirely on individual efforts.

In response to these challenges, Hokkaido is promoting wide-area cooperation in the waterworks industry. This is an attempt to seek a sustainable infrastructure for waterworks by sharing facilities and human resources across towns and cities. In addition, financial and technical support from the national and prefectural governments is gradually being expanded. However, even such collaboration is not easy in Hokkaido, which is geographically large and has a low population density. There is still an insurmountable barrier between the ideals of integration and efficiency and the distance and circumstances on the ground.

This record of eight years of support by a single employee in Rausu Town raises deep and quiet questions about the future of local infrastructure. What is a system? What does it mean to support? The most compelling realities of today's waterworks are revealed in this story.

Related information (source)

Hokkaido Government "Management Comparison Analysis Chart
Rausu Town "Comparative Analysis of Waterworks Business Management
Akahira City "Consideration of Waterworks Rate Revisions" (Japanese only)
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, "Material on Promotion of Wide-Area Development of Water Supply Business" (Japanese only)

For more detailed information, we recommend that you refer to the waterworks department of each municipality or the national waterworks statistics.