Japan’s most infamous mercury disaster left behind an unusual environmental legacy, instead of destroying the contamination, engineers dredged it from the seabed and sealed it beneath newly reclaimed land. From 1974 to 1990, Kumamoto Prefecture dealt with about 1.5 million cubic metres of Minamata Bay sediment containing more than 25 parts per million of mercury. The project created a 58-hectare landfill at a cost of about ¥48.5 billion. Decades later, the reclaimed ground has become a public park, but the mercury itself remains buried beneath it.
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