August 23, 1999

Charges sought against waste disposal company

Asahi Shimbun

Saitama police are preparing a criminal investigation against a waste
disposal company that is believed to have subcontracted its waste
processing operations to an
unlicensed firm, sources close to the case said.

If criminal charges are filed, it would be the first such case in the
nation following revisions of the law controlling waste disposal in
December 1997.

Under those revisions, the waste disposer and the subcontracting waste
processor must exchange written contracts before processing of
industrial waste is
commissioned.

The contracts must state the nature of the processor's business as
licensed by the prefectural governor as well as the actual processing
method.

Saitama police are eager to deal with illegal waste dumping in their
jurisdiction because of heightened concerns stemming from reports of
high dioxin levels in the
prefecture. Saitama also receives an inordinate volume of waste from
other prefectures.

In the past, contracts were often finalized through oral agreements.
Experts said that was a main cause of illegal dumping of industrial
waste.

The Saitama investigation will focus on four executives of three
petroleum refining companies located in Chiba, Shizuoka and Ibaraki
prefectures that operate the
waste disposer.

The four are suspected of failing to exchange written contracts with the
unlicensed waste collector, which operates out of Fujimi, Saitama
Prefecture, from the
summer of 1998 to this spring.

The four asked the 31-year-old waste collector to dispose of about 1,200
metal barrels containing about 240,000 liters of toxic sulfuric acid
pitch, which is
produced during the petroleum refining process, sources said.

The three companies paid the waste collector fees that were between 20
percent and 30 percent lower than those charged by licensed processors,
the sources said.

The unlicensed collector is suspected of dumping the toxic material in
forests around Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture, and the prefectural
capital of Chiba, the
sources said.

The metal barrels have begun corroding and some of the waste material
has leaked out.

Although much of the illegal dumping of waste in Japan has been tied to
unlicensed operators, it has been rare for those who generated the waste
and commissioned
those operators to be held responsible.

Licensed industrial waste processors and scholars blamed that factor for
the ever-increasing rate of illegal dumping.

According to Health and Welfare Ministry officials, about 444,000 tons
of industrial waste was illegally dumped in fiscal 1995 nationwide. The
ministry revised the
waste processing law to make the flow of waste disposal more
transparent, requiring waste generators to exchange manifests with all
those involved in the
process--from the waste collectors to transporters and processors.

However, the effects of the revisions have been somewhat disappointing
because effective implementation depends heavily on legal contracts
signed among licensed
companies.

The National Police Agency had been asking the Health and Welfare
Ministry to further tighten restrictions. Prefectural police departments
have been seeking new
interpretations of the law that would allow them to strengthen their
efforts to weed out illegal firms.