Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel

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The Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel (????????, shutoken gaikaku h?suiro), is an underground water infrastructure project in Kasukabe, Saitama, Japan. It is the world's largest underground flood water diversion facility, built to mitigate overflowing of the city's major waterways and rivers during rain and typhoon seasons. It is located between Showa in Tokyo and Kasukabe in Saitama prefecture, on the outskirts of the city of Tokyo in the Greater Tokyo Area, Japan.

Work on the project started in 1992 and was completed by early 2006. It consists of five concrete containment silos with heights of 65 m and diameters of 32 m, connected by 6.4 km of tunnels, 50 m beneath the surface, as well as a large water tank with a height of 25.4 m, with a length of 177m, with a width of 78m, and with 59 massive pillars connected to 78 10 MW (13,000 hp) pumps that can pump up to 200 tons of water (the approximate equivalent of a standard 25 meter pool) into the Edo River per second.

"Ryukyukan" for Underground Exploration Museum of The Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel is also a tourist attraction and can be visited for free; however, as the tours are conducted in Japanese, a Japanese speaker must be present in the group to act as a translator for non-Japanese speakers.

Video Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel

Media coverage

The main water tank resembles a temple and has been used in some movies and TV programs to create mystic scenes. In 2006, a Land Rover television commercial and print campaign was produced using Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel as a location.

The Dutch TV program Wie is de Mol? had an assignment taking place in the water tank.

The video game Mirror's Edge featured a version of the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel in several of its level designs.

In 2014, Australia's ABC TV science show Catalyst broadcast a short documentary (12'40") titled "Tokyo Flood Prevention" about this and associated flood mitigation structures.

The 2015 movie The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 also used the facility during the underground approach to the Capitol scenes.

In the manga, Attack on Titan No Regrets, based off the anime Shingeki No Kyojin. Levi and friends are from the Underground, a place inspired by illustrator, Hikaru Suruga's, visit here directly impacted what the images look like.