Keeping the town in shape for scattered residents

Retired town officials work on road maintenance in nuclear no-go zone

A worker of the Okuma Municipal Government branch office feeds a group of swans at Kumagawa River that flows through Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture. (Mainichi)

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150314p2a00m0na006000c.html

OKUMA, Fukushima -- A group of retired town officials here are working to keep this evacuated town in shape for local residents who have been forced to scatter across the country in the wake of 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis.

The delivery of radioactively contaminated soil generated from decontamination work around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to an interim storage facility in Okuma began on March 13. At the mouth of the Kumagawa River in the town, about 1.5 kilometers south of the storage site, a group of swans were seen resting before they fly back north. When an Okuma Municipal Government worker dressed in protective gear approached, the birds swam closer to him to get food.

Six retired senior officials of the Okuma Municipal Government volunteered to work when a branch office opened in April 2013. As a buffer zone is planned on the northern coastal side to isolate the storage facility from the shore, the branch office workers are requesting the municipal government to take natural conservation measures for the swans and salmon coming to the area.

The retired officials work on road maintenance and other tasks to keep their hometown looking good, although 96 percent of residential areas in the town have been designated as a difficult-to-return zone.

"I want people outside the town to think about the feelings of Okuma residents who decided to accept the storage facility in their hometown, by imagining as if this was their own hometown as well," said Tsunemitsu Yokoyama, 62, former chief of the town's disaster recovery section.