Turning Tokyo pretty for US$6.8b is Olympian Tepco task

Tokyo

MAKING the world's biggest city beautiful is a task Japan's beleaguered Tokyo Electric Power Co Holdings Inc is unlikely to relish. The company known as Tepco, which faces US$144 billion in clean up costs for the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown, has been assigned with removing hundreds of thousands of utility poles across Tokyo so visitors to the 2020 Olympics can enjoy uninterrupted views of its famous cherry blossoms and neon-lit streets.

While this adds to the burdens of the embattled company, which is paying compensation to victims after a triple meltdown left it on the verge of default and in need of a government bailout, Yuriko Koike may not have sympathy. The Tokyo governor, co-author of the book No Power Pole Revolution, wants to accelerate plans to remove the poles from the metropolis - a project that could cost as much as US$6.8 billion.