August 20, 2004
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Ministry of Land, Transportation and Infrastructure and Ministry of the Environment (referred to as the "three Ministries") compiled a report on state of population covered by wastewater treatment facilities across the nation as of the end of FY 2003 (March 31, 2004).
The three Ministries agreed to adopt the population served with wastewater treatment facilities including sewage, agricultural effluent treatment facilities, johkasoh, a on-site treatment system for domestic wastewater, and community wastewater treatment plants as an indicator describing state of dissemination of wastewater treatment facilities. The information on the state of dissemination as of the end of a fiscal year was firstly released for FY 1996.
Local governments have been implementing improvement of wastewater treatment facilities efficiently and effectively on the basis of the "prefectural plan" that stipulates areas, methods and timeframes of the improvement.
The number of the people covered by wastewater treatment facilities across Japan as of the end of FY 2003 is 98.54 million, 2.55 million increase since the end of FY 2002. Dissemination rate, which is the ratio of number of the people covered by wastewater treatment facilities to total population, is 77.7% (75.8% as of March 31, 2003).
However, there is a big gap between population covered by wastewater treatment facilities in big cities and medium and small towns and villages. Namely, dissemination rate in small towns with population under 50 thousand is only 56.4%.
The breakdown of number of people covered by wastewater treatment facilities by facility types includes 84.58 million are covered by sewage, 3.28 million by agricultural effluent treatment facilities, 10.30 million by johkasoh, and 380 thousand by community wastewater treatment plants.
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| * | FY 2003 Population Covered by Wastewater Treatment Facilities |
| * | FY 2003 Population Covered by Wastewater Treatment Facilities by City Scale |