KAWATANA, Nagasaki Prefecture--Faced with having their ancestral land expropriated this month, residents opposed to a long-planned dam construction project here are playing what may be their last hand in their attempts to stay.

Sixty or so residents from 13 households in the town's Kobaru district have been ordered to move out by Nov. 18 to pave the way for construction of the Ishiki dam.

They can either leave voluntarily or they will be forced to move.

But they remain fiercely opposed to the project and vow never to give in, although 80 percent of the landowners in the targeted area opted to go along with the central government subsidized project.

The Kobaru community with rice paddies and lush farm land will be submerged under rising waters when the dam is completed.

A wide range of people, including celebrities and a well-known U.S. outdoor clothing store, have chipped in to support the holdouts.

They are united in their condemnation of a procedure that allows authorities to coercively strip people of their land and question the necessity of a dam at the expense of local residents’ way of life and culture.

Construction of the Ishiki dam in Kawatana, with a population of 14,000, was approved by the central government in 1975. The Nagasaki prefectural government and the Sasebo city government are proceeding with the project.

The 28.5 billion yen ($261 million) program is aimed at securing a stable water supply for the neighboring city of Sasebo and to protect the central area of Kawatana from possible flooding by stopping the flow of the Ishikigawa river, which runs through the town.

Construction of the dam, which will be 55.4 meters tall and 234 meters wide, has been postponed nine times due to opposition from residents in the Kobaru community and elsewhere.

The 13 households have been staging a daily sit-in protest for the past 10 years at a site where preparatory work for the dam construction began.

Others have rallied to the cause. A citizens group backed by the Japanese arm of U.S. outdoor clothing maker Patagonia submitted a petition for open dialogue over the dam construction to the Nagasaki prefectural government in August after collecting about 50,000 signatures.

A host of celebrities have weighed in on the issue, including internationally acclaimed musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and veteran folk singer Tokiko Kato.

Dozens of politicians are also backing the residents’ cause. Seventy-three Diet members and local assembly members of opposition parties have formed a group opposing the dam project. Among them is Yukiko Kada, an Upper House member and expert on environmental sociology.

When the residents’ right to land in the planned construction site was transferred to the central government on Sept. 20, Patagonia’s Japanese office expressed its dismay on its website.

The residents and their supporters plan to stage a protest rally in Kawatana on Nov. 17. They hope to attract 1,000 opponents of the dam project from across Japan in an effort to focus public attention on the issue.

Kada and a suprapartisan group of lawmakers that monitors public works projects are expected to attend.

In response to a push by opponents, a pro-dam league of members of the prefectural assembly, as well as the Sasebo and Kawatana municipal assemblies, met on Oct. 30 for the first time in 10 years.

“We should not postpone the project any longer,” said Aikoku Tanaka, a prefectural assemblyman and member of the league.

Referring to the establishment of the anti-dam group of politicians, another member of the pro-dam league said, “Our side should not sit silently.”

In 1982, prefectural authorities met fierce resistance from the Kobaru residents when they mobilized riot police to forcibly carry out a land survey. That only served to heighten the residents’ mistrust.

The residents argue that the official projection of water demands in Sasebo, a city with with a population of 247,000, is overstated, given the city’s continued decline in population.

They also assert that elevating river banks and undertaking river channel dredging will be sufficiently effective to control the water volume in the event of torrential rains.

They sued the central government, demanding cancellation of the dam project. But the Nagasaki District Court dismissed the lawsuit in July 2018.

The ruling was appealed to the Fukuoka High Court, which is scheduled to deliver its verdict on Nov. 29.

With 13 households refusing to budge, prefectural authorities are moving ahead with compulsory subrogation.

The prefectural government's expropriation committee issued an order in May for the residents to surrender their land totaling about 120,000 square meters under the land expropriation law.

As a result, their property rights were transferred to the central government in September.

After the Nov. 18 deadline for moving out has passed, prefectural authorities can seize the land at any time under a process known as administrative subrogation.

If necessary, they are empowered to take forcible measures when other ways of removing residents is deemed extremely difficult and leaving the situation to fester is deemed as “significantly undermining the common good.”

Administrative subrogation has never been used in connection with a dam project, according to the land ministry.

But Nagasaki Governor Hodo Nakamura has not ruled out that option, even though it is unprecedented.

“I will make a decision by looking at the big picture," he said.