Japan’s Municipalities to Keep Data on Aging Water Mains

Japan's municipalities will be required from fiscal 2020 to keep data on water mains under a plan by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to ramp up the replacement of aging infrastructure across the country.

The program, which is designed to better help local governments fix decrepit water mains in a systematic manner, would use data on the structure of the pipes as well as when and where they were installed, the sources said.

The ministry plans to submit a bill to revise the water supply law to the ordinary session of the Diet in late February.

More than 10 percent of all water mains in Japan are due to be replaced as they have passed their 40-year lifespan.

Most of the country’s water mains were developed in the 1970s.

However, work to replace aging mains has stalled due to a decline in water revenue as a result of the nation’s dwindling population. Several pipe rupture accidents have also been reported recently.

The low proportion of earthquake-resistant water mains could see water supply cut in the event of a large-scale disaster.

Under its proposal, the ministry aims to clarify the responsibility of municipalities to guard against the deterioration of mains, according to the sources.

In principle, water supply is operated by city, town and village governments. But under the bill, prefectural and municipal governments would need to make efforts to combine water supply operations or consign the operations to private-sector companies in order to strengthen their financial positions.

Prefectural governments would be advised to set up committees to consider measures to bring together water supply operations.

Read more on: The Japan Times

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• Data Management
• Integrated Water Management
• Water Supply
• Infrastructure
• Integrated Infrastructure
• Infrastructure Management
• Infrastructure
• Infrastructure
• Municipal Water Council
• Data Management
• Data