Nearly 1,000 landowners and environmental activists crammed into the the gallery May 8 for the first deliberations by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's land expropriation committee on the controversial construction of a waste dump in Hinode, western Tokyo.
"Forests could never be restored to life on soil polluted with toxic chemicals. Please do not deprive us of this priceless forest," Kiyoe Tashima, a local resident near the planned site, said in the opening statement by the landowners.
The San-Tama District Wide Area Waste Disposal Union, which handles garbage from 27 municipalities in the Tama district, filed an application with the committee in December seeking public expropriation of two tracts of land within the construction site. The tracts, totaling 460 sq. meters in size, have been split into small pieces, with title distributed to more than 2,800 people who are against construction of the waste dump.