Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
and formally put on the agenda. Height of the dam is 103 m. Storage capac-
ity is 125 million m
3
. With 422 ha of inundated area, 193 households were
relocated among 553 total households in then Ikawa village. Although whole
village was not inundated, the center of the main village as well as several
hamlets along the river was submerged.
Due to this large (relatively in Japan) number of affected households,
negotiation between Chubu Electric Power Company and villagers faced
with di
culties. After rigorous consultation among parties, Chubu Elec-
tric Power Company finally agreed to three principles of compensation
requested by villagers. These are: (1) to complete Dainichi Road (road
to Shizuoka city), (2) to build New Village for civilized life, and (3) to
compensate fully and satisfactorily for better and improved living stan-
dard. One of major villagers' requests was to build “New Village.”
5
,
6
At
the same time, there was an option to have cash compensation instead and
99 households among 193 affected households took this option, to leave the
village.
This compensation scheme, New Village Building aimed to provide with
compensation on land-for-land basis. Some of villagers, who lost houses
and cultivated land, obtained new housing and new land plot in a newly
developed area in the village. Others received new reclamation land for their
housing within the original main village which was also equipped with new
infrastructure and community facilities. In one of such newly developed
areas, called Nishiyama-daira, near the main village, 23 houses were built
with attached land plots and other community facilities including water
supply, electricity supply.
There were two special features in this compensation scheme. First,
in the newly developed land, rice cultivation was also newly introduced.
At high altitude around 700 m, Ikawa village had not had any substantial
paddy field before inundation. Their main staple food had been millet,
with slash and burn agriculture. It is said that many villagers had known
rice as a very precious commodity but not rice plant itself. Second, for
this new agricultural practice, one agricultural expert was stationed for
4 years in Nishiyama-daira in order to assist villagers to stabilize their
agricultural productions and hence their livelihoods. With a help of the
expert, villagers moved to the newly developed land had substantial success
in rice farming and their livelihoods after relocation was improved in a very
short time. New Village Building could bring stable and secure livelihood
to villagers.
