According to a report of Japanese leading weekly magazine, the Sunday Mainichi, 05/02/2010 issue, it was made clear at the Tokyo Assembly, on 19/01/2010, that there were still today more than 6,000 wooden and steel basic piles of 10-30 meters long, driven in the land of the old gas works at Toyosu where the TMG is planning to relocate the Tsukiji Market to.

Assembly member: "Doesn't any contamination penetrate to under the 'impermeable formation' through holes of so many piles?"
Unsworn witness *) : "I am obliged to say that I don't know." [...] "Groundwater, if polluted, is harmless for human health, since nobody will drink it."

*) Mr Tatemasa Hirata, who served as chairman of the Expert Panel on the Countermeasure Works for Soil Pollutions of the Proposed New Market Site at Toyosu.

Mr Hirata said also that, at the Expert Panel, he had seen no report on the piles, while the TMG insisted that their existence was assumed by the Technical Panel which followed after the Expert Panel.