Photo/Illutration The K9 embankment juts out at the right of Oura Bay in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture. (Kotaro Ebara)

NAHA--A total of 30.2 billion yen (282.24 million) in central government funding went down the drain after officials in Tokyo were finally forced to concede that some land reclamation work for a new U.S. military base in Okinawa Prefecture was doomed before it started.

The money was paid to construction companies that had been contracted to build embankments or reclaim land in Oura Bay off the Henoko district of Nago in the southernmost prefecture.

Funding was paid to six contractors, including work for embankment construction. 

The site is to serve as a replacement facility for the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, also in Okinawa Prefecture.

The Defense Ministry was forced to alter the project's design due to the existence of soft seabed discovered in the bay, a situation that emerged as far back as at least 2016 but was withheld from the public.

As a result, the embankments and related work for reclamation were abandoned.

But a ministry official defended the payment made to the contractors, brushing aside howls of wasteful spending by critics of the project that is fiercely opposed by the Okinawa prefectural government and the vast majority of residents.

“Necessary work was done to proceed with the entire project,” the official said. “The payment was made on the basis of how much work was completed.”

The ministry contracted the six contractors for embankment and other work between November 2014 and March 2015.

The existence of weak subsoil in the bay was detected in a drilling survey conducted between 2014 and 2016.

Even so, the central government plowed ahead with the land reclamation project in December 2018 without publicly acknowledging the finding that would eventually prove to be a major setback.

The following month, the government acknowledged the existence of the soft seabed and the need for a design change in the reclamation work.

In April this year, it submitted plans to the Okinawa prefectural government for approval for a change from the initial design.

According to the ministry, the six projects to build the embankments and other work were canceled between February and March as the locations of the structures to be built will be changed under the new design.

For one of the six projects, the K9 embankment, 30 percent of the construction was completed. The contractor was paid about 1 billion yen, almost the full amount.

Work on the other projects had yet to start.

Of the five, the ministry paid 200 million yen to 8.3 billion yen less than the value of the four contract prices.

“The work was not begun yet, but we ended the contracts with payments less than the contract prices after taking into consideration the status of the work,” the ministry official said.

For the remaining embankment, the ministry paid 22.4 billion yen, or 6.7 billion yen more than the value of the original order.

The ministry explained that the disparity was intended to cover a drilling survey and work to install what amounts to a membrane to prevent pollution around the envisaged embankment.

The design change means new construction work must be undertaken because the locations of the embankment will be different from the original.

Hiroshi Arikawa, vising professor of public policy at Nihon University and a former senior official with the central government’s Board of Audit, was scathing of the central government's decision to push ahead with reclamation work despite knowing that the soft seabed could compromise the project.

“It was an unthinkable approach for a public works project,” Arikawa said. “It is not surprising that some work already done will be rendered unnecessary if the locations of the embankments have to be changed to accommodate the design change."

He said the central government’s handling of the project "deserves to be scrutinized as it generated double expenditures.”

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