[ Asahi Shimbun ] Okinawa’s governor plans to reject U.S. base design change
Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki said on Nov. 25 the prefecture will reject a proposed design change in the landfill work for the construction of a planned U.S. military base when he met the ruling prefectural assembly group backing him.
He cited what prefectural officials perceive to be flaws in the measures to strengthen the weak seabed in the planned reclamation area, located off the Henoko district of Nago in northern Okinawa Prefecture, along with the steps outlined to protect the surrounding environment.
The landfill work is part of the central government’s project to build a new U.S. base that would take over the functions of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, also in the prefecture.
The project went into motion when Governor Hirokazu Nakaima approved a request made by the central government in 2013 for the reclamation work necessary to construct the base.
But a weak seabed, described “as soft as mayonnaise,” had been discovered in the northern portion of the planned reclamation area during a drilling survey completed by 2016.
In 2019, it finally acknowledged the need to carry out additional large-scale work aimed at reinforcing the shaky seabed in the 111-hectare northern portion of the area.
The central government applied for a change in the design of the landfill work in April 2020, in line with the Public Waters Reclamation Law.
About 71,000 structural pilings will be required to secure the problem area under the updated plan, raising doubts about whether such work would ever be completed because of the enormous technological difficulties involved in it.
In late 2019, the central government upwardly revised its overall cost estimate for the base’s construction to as much as 930 billion yen ($8.08 billion), about 2.7 times the initial estimate, due to the extra work required to strengthen the seabed there.
The return of land for the Futenma facility is expected to be pushed back to the latter half of the 2030s from fiscal 2022 at the earliest.
DPA Notes: Given the strategic importance of having the Americans based at Okinawa as a deterrence against North Korean and Chinese aggression – we believe the chances of the return of land to the Okinawa prefecture is close to zero in the near future.