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© Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Tokyo to 'screen off' bacteria for Olympic swimming in bay
By Stephen Wade TOKYO©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
19 Comments
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gogogo
How about fixing the problem rather than patching?
Yubaru
I'll believe it when I see it. I can not imagine anyone wanting to swim in that cesspool, where the planners are going to host the event.
Cricky
Screens "may" reduce the levels but won't they also trap the current levels? 20 times the international standard that's disgusting.
Stuart hayward
The screens may help to lower bacteria levels but I thought there were issues with toxins & heavy metals leaching from what used to be a dump?
Do the hustle
And yet, yet still see people fishing there and they eat their catch. Every summer there hundreds of families down in the mudflats at Kasai (near Disneyland) collecting clams out of the mud to take home and feed to their kids. Yum! Yum!
The only way to fix the problem is to move the venue to a cleaner port - if there is one in Japan. Tokyo Bay is famous for being treated as a garbage dump and open sewer for many centuries and it still is being used as a dump. It would take at least another century to clean it up.
JeffLee
So if pollution isn't a swimming issue, why will the special screens needed? The Tokyo officials' position seems really illogical.
Will the screens remain in place? Or is it a case of clean water for a tiny number of short-term visitors, dirty water for the millions of people who live here and pay taxes?
Alfie Noakes
The cost of this farrago has now ballooned up to $24 billion dollars yet the athletes are expected to swim through clouds of fecal bacteria.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201810050032.html
"Yuji Ishizaka, an associate professor of sports sociology at Nara Women's University, said organizing committees always tended to underestimate expenses, but control over spending would be lost if transparency was lacking.
"The organizing committee and central government must fulfill its responsibility to explain the appropriateness of the expenditures made for the Tokyo Olympics," he said.
Olympics in Japan are nothing more than a massive scam to shift public money into the private sector without any oversight.
Tokyo-Engr
If you look at the location of Odaiba and then consider the huge population of Tokyo and that wastewater treatment facilities discharge into the Sumida river and Tokyo Bay this is not so surprising. I have walked over the Shinagawa wastewater plant many times (it is huge - one of the world's largest I believe) and it discharges near the Shinagawa/Shibaura side of the Tokyo Bay.
I can imagine considering the tidal activity that much of that discharge and some of the discharge into the Sumida river gets trapped near Odaiba due to the tidal activity and water currents. In other locations these concentrations may be lower (where there is a better flow of water) I think concentrations near Odaiba are probably higher due to the above factors.
I think this was a poor choice of venue and the location should be changed in the interest of the health of the athletes.
Scrote
They won't change the location: the olympics is all about money and profits, with the health of the athletes coming far behind. I'm sure they would hold the olympics in somewhere like Kabul if they were offered enough money/bribes.
ALmost
I'd like to see the ones making this decision to spend some time in that body of water and see for themselves how it feels.
Alexandre T. Ishii
Why it should be in Tokyo Bay marathon swimming and triathlon? Just to learn from that Rio's bad experience Olympic organizers to find much clean water like as Shonan in Kanagawa prefecture or a beautiful beaches of Chiba prefecture outside Tokyo Bay. Organizers should think the swimmer athletes health. Tokyo Bay should be definitely much clean but not for this Olympic purpose.
rainyday
It would be awesome if they viewed these and other problems as not just an Olympics concern that needed to be dealt with for a couple of weeks but rather as a problem for residents of Tokyo who might benefit from a long term solution.
Luddite
Utterly disgraceful, they are putting the health of athletes at risk. Just move it somewhere cleaner.
smithinjapan
Nakamura: “gosh! And to think we pulled this off! I guess that means the BS we told about I being safer than Rio means we gotta put some toilet paper in the bay to mop up the sauce a bit holds, but my pockets are still full!”
since1981
From my understanding the screens would keep the algae/bacteria at the bottom therefore showing the surface clean and below levels but wouldn't all the algae/bacteria be stirred up when the athletics start swimming through the water?
Dukeleto
@Alfie Noakes
I could not have said it better!
Concerned Citizen
I wouldn't want to swim in it.
Michelle Harrison
Think outside the box. Think of permanent solution to absorb pollution from water. Work with local industry to stop pollution from entering water as much as possible. for everyone, make use of your beach again. Don't waste money on on bandaids when things need a permanent solution.
Haaa Nemui
If they can get Beijing and Rio sorted, they can do it for Tokyo. I'm sure, by the start of the games they'll be in a better way than Rio was.