Twenty years after the floodgates in Isahaya Bay, Nagasaki Prefecture were closed in a project to reclaim part of the bay and create farmland, the national government remains stuck in a legal quagmire over the issue of whether the gates should be reopened. A new court ruling last Monday only confirmed the stalemate. The antagonism shows no sign of dissipating between nearby fishermen, who blame their declining catches on changes in sea currents since the gates were closed, and local farmers, who have settled in the reclaimed area and oppose reopening the gates out of fear that their crops would be damaged by saltwater.

The government, which took charge of the ¥253 billion reclamation project, bears the primary responsibility to resolve the impasse. It needs to make a political decision to settle the problem. Leaving the matter to the judiciary is unlikely to produce results that satisfy both the fishermen and the farmers.

In response to a request from Nagasaki Prefecture, the government made the decision to go ahead with the Isahaya reclamation in 1986 for the purposes of farmland development and reducing flood damage. Three years after the floodgates were closed in 1997, however, fishermen from neighboring Saga Prefecture operating in the Ariake Sea suffered a record poor harvest of seaweed as well as a sharp decrease in their shellfish catch due to frequent red tides. Claiming that the floodgates weakened the velocity of the sea current, causing the declining harvest and catch, the fishermen filed a lawsuit with the Saga District Court in 2002, calling for a court order to open the gates.