Japan - railway "stealing" water for electricity
Posted: 15 Mar 2009, 06:39
1. Japan's bullet train operator is caught fiddling the meter
Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent
From The Times
March 14, 2009
In Britain, it would pass unnoticed; to the Japanese, it is nothing short of the collapse of civil society. As of next week, the trains in Tokyo may be running a few minutes late.
East Japan Railway (JR East), the privatised company that until now has given Tokyo the world's most efficient and punctual public transport system, has been caught red-handed stealing water from a river many hundreds of miles from the Japanese capital and using it in its hydroelectric plants, the power behind the glory of a rail system that is the envy of the rest of the world.
As a consequence, it is in a desperate and wholly unfamiliar scramble to find the electricity it needs to run the service to the impeccable standards that everyone has come to expect. The prospects of securing that power appear bleak and, in terms that send a chill along station platforms across the capital, JR East said that it “cannot rule out the possibility that train operations will be affectedâ€. Moreover, it has done little to dispel the appearance of panic. “We are walking a tightrope securing the energy we need,†Satoshi Seino, the company's president, said last week.
The looming disaster (by Japanese standards, if not of those glumly trekking through London Waterloo each morning) may be an indignity too far for a country that has been buffeted by the most violent recessionary nosedive in living memory. Over the past six months, the Japanese have watched as stock markets have imploded, property prices crashed and GDP contracted at a pace that has startled even the most bearish of economists. And through it all, they have been able to cling to perhaps Japan's proudest achievement: a metropolitan rail network that seamlessly carried millions of blue and white-collar workers into and around the city every day.
The trains are clean, fast and frequent. The drivers mentally divide their working days into 20-second segments to ensure that the system runs smoothly. You could, it was said, set your clock by the time of your train into town.
But for the past seven years, it seems, JR East's spectacular record of efficiency has been built on a combination of fraud and resource theft that has centred on the Shinanogawa River in the northern prefecture of Niigata, where JR East has a hydroelectric plant that supplies about a quarter of the power to the Tokyo rail network.
The plant was supplied with water through the sluices of the Miyanaka Dam, which in turn were controlled by JR East. The local government believed that it was able to control the railway's exploitation of the river by installing gauges that measured daily water intake and limited usage to 317 tonnes per second.
According to the Ministry of Transport, JR East tweaked the gauges by installing a piece of software that set them to read the magic number of 317 when far more water was passing through them. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of water are believed to have been stolen between 2002 and 2008, a period in which JR East was able to boast of punctuality records that were impressive even by its own astonishing standards.
Downstream of the Miyanaka Dam, meanwhile, a once-mighty torrent was reduced to an anaemic trickle and local fishermen despaired of their dwindling salmon catch.
JR East's warnings of trouble looming on the line follow the Transport Ministry's decision to revoke the company's permit to draw water from the Shinanogawa River, depriving the rail network of the 450 megawatts of electricity that the plant produced.
Under normal circumstances, the extra power might have been easy to source from thermal or nuclear plants elsewhere, but Tokyo already has significant generating problems. Tokyo Electric Power is scrambling to meet demand after the closure in 2006 of its Kashiwazaki nuclear plant because of a powerful earthquake.
2. JR East supplied false data on dam
BY HIDEYUKI MIURA
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
2009/2/5
A battle over water use deep in the mountains of Niigata Prefecture could affect Tokyo commuters riding the Yamanote Line.
Residents and local governments in Niigata Prefecture are outraged by revelations that East Japan Railway Co. (JR East), for at least a decade, not only used more water than permitted from the Shinanogawa river, but also covered up the misuse with computer programs that issued false data.
A hydroelectric plant operated by JR East takes water from the Shinanogawa river at the Miyanaka Dam in Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture.
The plant generates 1.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year that mainly goes to operate Yamanote Line loop trains in central Tokyo. The plant generates about 23 percent of all the electricity used by JR East.
JR East officials said one in two Yamanote Line trains runs on the power generated by the Shinanogawa river water.
If that electricity cannot be used and other sources must be found, fares on the Yamanote Line could increase, JR East officials warned.
Last year, the Tokamachi municipal government asked the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to disclose information about water use. JR East was found to have used about 180 million tons of water over its allowance between 1998 and 2007.
JR East is permitted to take a maximum of 317 tons of water per second from the Shinanogawa, but it must release at least 7 tons every second downstream from the Miyanaka Dam.
However, JR East had installed a computer program to fabricate the data in measurement devices attached to the dam water intake gate.
The program showed the measurement devices recording a maximum water intake of 317 tons even when the actual intake was much greater.
At the downstream outlet, a program also fabricated data to make it appear as though 7 tons of water was being discharged, when in fact a much smaller volume of water was discharged.
Over the decade, about 380,000 tons less water was discharged than shown by the false computer records.
Reports of illegal water use and faked records at the hydroelectric plants of electricity companies emerged after 2006.
In March 2007, when transport ministry officials asked JR East about its water usage, the company replied that there were no irregularities.
Transport ministry officials are considering taking administrative action against JR East for violating the rivers law.
Meanwhile, residents living along the Shinanogawa river on Jan. 27 demanded JR East immediately stop using water from the river.
Tokamachi Mayor Naoto Taguchi visited JR East headquarters in Tokyo's Shibuya district on Jan. 30 to criticize the company's water usage.
Takashi Sawamoto, the JR East executive in charge of the company's electricity network, apologized for the mismanagement.
The 367-kilometer Shinanogawa river is the nation's longest and has the largest total water flow of 16 billion tons a year. At midstream, nearly all the water is used for power generation at Miyanaka Dam and the Nishi-Otaki Dam, which is operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co.
During the summer, water temperatures in some sections of the river exceed 30 degrees, making it difficult for fish to survive.
In 1999, local governments in Niigata and Nagano prefectures along with the central government set up a deliberative council to study the effects of water usage on the ecosystem over a 10-year period.
The council is expected to issue a report as early as late March calling for JR East to drastically cut its water usage from the Shinanogawa river.
JR East officials have said they would abide by the recommendations. However, if the company is forced to find new sources of electricity, it could mean higher train fares in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
(IHT/Asahi: February 5, 2009)
Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent
From The Times
March 14, 2009
In Britain, it would pass unnoticed; to the Japanese, it is nothing short of the collapse of civil society. As of next week, the trains in Tokyo may be running a few minutes late.
East Japan Railway (JR East), the privatised company that until now has given Tokyo the world's most efficient and punctual public transport system, has been caught red-handed stealing water from a river many hundreds of miles from the Japanese capital and using it in its hydroelectric plants, the power behind the glory of a rail system that is the envy of the rest of the world.
As a consequence, it is in a desperate and wholly unfamiliar scramble to find the electricity it needs to run the service to the impeccable standards that everyone has come to expect. The prospects of securing that power appear bleak and, in terms that send a chill along station platforms across the capital, JR East said that it “cannot rule out the possibility that train operations will be affectedâ€. Moreover, it has done little to dispel the appearance of panic. “We are walking a tightrope securing the energy we need,†Satoshi Seino, the company's president, said last week.
The looming disaster (by Japanese standards, if not of those glumly trekking through London Waterloo each morning) may be an indignity too far for a country that has been buffeted by the most violent recessionary nosedive in living memory. Over the past six months, the Japanese have watched as stock markets have imploded, property prices crashed and GDP contracted at a pace that has startled even the most bearish of economists. And through it all, they have been able to cling to perhaps Japan's proudest achievement: a metropolitan rail network that seamlessly carried millions of blue and white-collar workers into and around the city every day.
The trains are clean, fast and frequent. The drivers mentally divide their working days into 20-second segments to ensure that the system runs smoothly. You could, it was said, set your clock by the time of your train into town.
But for the past seven years, it seems, JR East's spectacular record of efficiency has been built on a combination of fraud and resource theft that has centred on the Shinanogawa River in the northern prefecture of Niigata, where JR East has a hydroelectric plant that supplies about a quarter of the power to the Tokyo rail network.
The plant was supplied with water through the sluices of the Miyanaka Dam, which in turn were controlled by JR East. The local government believed that it was able to control the railway's exploitation of the river by installing gauges that measured daily water intake and limited usage to 317 tonnes per second.
According to the Ministry of Transport, JR East tweaked the gauges by installing a piece of software that set them to read the magic number of 317 when far more water was passing through them. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of water are believed to have been stolen between 2002 and 2008, a period in which JR East was able to boast of punctuality records that were impressive even by its own astonishing standards.
Downstream of the Miyanaka Dam, meanwhile, a once-mighty torrent was reduced to an anaemic trickle and local fishermen despaired of their dwindling salmon catch.
JR East's warnings of trouble looming on the line follow the Transport Ministry's decision to revoke the company's permit to draw water from the Shinanogawa River, depriving the rail network of the 450 megawatts of electricity that the plant produced.
Under normal circumstances, the extra power might have been easy to source from thermal or nuclear plants elsewhere, but Tokyo already has significant generating problems. Tokyo Electric Power is scrambling to meet demand after the closure in 2006 of its Kashiwazaki nuclear plant because of a powerful earthquake.
2. JR East supplied false data on dam
BY HIDEYUKI MIURA
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
2009/2/5
A battle over water use deep in the mountains of Niigata Prefecture could affect Tokyo commuters riding the Yamanote Line.
Residents and local governments in Niigata Prefecture are outraged by revelations that East Japan Railway Co. (JR East), for at least a decade, not only used more water than permitted from the Shinanogawa river, but also covered up the misuse with computer programs that issued false data.
A hydroelectric plant operated by JR East takes water from the Shinanogawa river at the Miyanaka Dam in Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture.
The plant generates 1.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year that mainly goes to operate Yamanote Line loop trains in central Tokyo. The plant generates about 23 percent of all the electricity used by JR East.
JR East officials said one in two Yamanote Line trains runs on the power generated by the Shinanogawa river water.
If that electricity cannot be used and other sources must be found, fares on the Yamanote Line could increase, JR East officials warned.
Last year, the Tokamachi municipal government asked the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to disclose information about water use. JR East was found to have used about 180 million tons of water over its allowance between 1998 and 2007.
JR East is permitted to take a maximum of 317 tons of water per second from the Shinanogawa, but it must release at least 7 tons every second downstream from the Miyanaka Dam.
However, JR East had installed a computer program to fabricate the data in measurement devices attached to the dam water intake gate.
The program showed the measurement devices recording a maximum water intake of 317 tons even when the actual intake was much greater.
At the downstream outlet, a program also fabricated data to make it appear as though 7 tons of water was being discharged, when in fact a much smaller volume of water was discharged.
Over the decade, about 380,000 tons less water was discharged than shown by the false computer records.
Reports of illegal water use and faked records at the hydroelectric plants of electricity companies emerged after 2006.
In March 2007, when transport ministry officials asked JR East about its water usage, the company replied that there were no irregularities.
Transport ministry officials are considering taking administrative action against JR East for violating the rivers law.
Meanwhile, residents living along the Shinanogawa river on Jan. 27 demanded JR East immediately stop using water from the river.
Tokamachi Mayor Naoto Taguchi visited JR East headquarters in Tokyo's Shibuya district on Jan. 30 to criticize the company's water usage.
Takashi Sawamoto, the JR East executive in charge of the company's electricity network, apologized for the mismanagement.
The 367-kilometer Shinanogawa river is the nation's longest and has the largest total water flow of 16 billion tons a year. At midstream, nearly all the water is used for power generation at Miyanaka Dam and the Nishi-Otaki Dam, which is operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co.
During the summer, water temperatures in some sections of the river exceed 30 degrees, making it difficult for fish to survive.
In 1999, local governments in Niigata and Nagano prefectures along with the central government set up a deliberative council to study the effects of water usage on the ecosystem over a 10-year period.
The council is expected to issue a report as early as late March calling for JR East to drastically cut its water usage from the Shinanogawa river.
JR East officials have said they would abide by the recommendations. However, if the company is forced to find new sources of electricity, it could mean higher train fares in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
(IHT/Asahi: February 5, 2009)