The government will appeal a high court ruling that a dam project in what is now the city of Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, is illegal, official sources said Tuesday.
The sources said the government will file the appeal with the Supreme Court against the Dec. 8 Osaka High Court decision, which reversed a lower court ruling that the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry worked out the agricultural reservoir project in 1994 without conducting a geological study as required under the Land Improvement Law.
At the top court, the farm ministry will argue that it performed various advance studies needed to promote the project and that the high court's interpretation of the law was wrong, the sources said.
On Dec. 8, the Osaka High Court repealed a lower court decision that had rejected the plaintiffs' demand for the dam project to be scrapped.
According to the high court, the farm ministry adopted a plan in January 1994 to build a 90-meter-high dam in an upstream portion of the Echi River and create an agricultural reservoir with storage capacity of 25.7 million cu. meters at a cost of 47.6 billion yen to meet projected irrigation shortages.
Some 50 people in the town of Eigenji, Shiga Prefecture, filed the suit with the Otsu District Court in October 1994, seeking nullification of the project.
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