An Invisible Crime Proceeding Beneath the Soil Japan's Environmental Risks Reflected by Stable Landfill Sites (1993-1994)

An Invisible Crime Proceeding Beneath the Soil Japan's Environmental Risks Reflected by Stable Landfill Sites (1993-1994)
In Japan in the early 1990s, environmental problems surrounding stable final disposal sites quickly surfaced, shaking the society as an environmental crime that was going on under the radar. Originally, stable landfills were operated under the assumption that only stable wastes such as scrap metal and glass would be disposed of in them, and that leachate control measures would be simple. In reality, however, this premise has been violated, and there has been a series of cases across Japan where unauthorized materials have been mixed in and mismanagement has been rampant, causing toxic chemicals to seep underground and causing abnormalities in the quality of the surrounding water. Such improper disposal is a violation of the Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law, and is now being treated as an environmental crime.

For residents, it was a danger that proceeded out of sight. The strange odor and discoloration of the well water and health concerns spread throughout the community, and people began demanding water quality tests and information disclosure, monitoring delivery trucks, and campaigning against the disposal site. When the repository, which was built deep in a wooded area, began to affect local life, residents became even more alarmed. At the time, large-scale illegal dumping, such as the Teshima Incident, was also a social problem, and people shared the anger that urban waste was being forced on rural areas.

In response to the residents' accusations and media reports, the government decided to conduct on-site inspections throughout the country. The 1997 revision of the Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law and the 1998 tightening of technical standards made impermeable structures mandatory, strengthened water quality inspections, and tightened leachate control measures, thus shifting the concept from "stable" to "safe. This was a shift from the conventional thinking that because something is stable, it is safe.

This problem was not simply an inadequacy arising from a gap in the system, but a shadow of the times created by an economy-first structure that pushed risk into places where it could not be seen, and a weak monitoring system. Underground contamination is difficult to remediate later, and the series of incidents and tightened regulations of the 1990s were a turning point that inscribed the precautionary principle of no mixing and no leaking into waste policy.