ABSTRACT
Very soon, however, nature intervened. In August and September of 1902 exceptionally heavy floods swept down the Watarase, covering much of the polluted area with up to five feet of water. Damage to buildings was heavy, but astonishingly these floods, unlike those of the previous decade, proved to be life-giving;1 when they receded, they left behind a thin layer of rich new soil spread over the poisoned fields, recalling the pre-pollution inundations to which the region had owed so much of its traditional fertility. The water itself miraculously, was poison-free. Slowly, plant and wild life began to recover, and with it, the agriculture of this once rich region. Autumn-planted crops bore a modest harvest next year, and by 1904 many fields had regained something approaching normal productivity.
