The Last Clean River
最後のきれいな川
A week later, the editor handed Aya a map with a blue line running through it.
"This is the Aoki River, which was once the cleanest river in the ," he said.
"Now local people say it has become dirtier than ever, so go and find out why."
Aya travelled to the countryside, where an old was waiting by the water.
"When I was young, this was the clearest water that you could imagine," he told her.
"The fish were bigger, the was faster, and children swam here every summer."
Today the river looked grey, and a strange smell rose from its surface.
Aya learned that a which stands had been releasing waste for years.
The company that owns the said it followed all the rules.
Its manager argued that the was smaller than reports had claimed.
But an environmental group showed Aya tests that told a very different story.
Their results suggested the water was more dangerous than the company admitted.
Aya did not know which side she should believe at first.
She remembered the lesson that every good reporter must check the facts.
So she collected water samples herself and sent them to an lab.
The results proved that the river was far more polluted than the legal allowed.
Yet Aya also discovered that the gave jobs to most of the town.
Closing it would bring cleaner water, but it would also bring poverty.
This was the hardest problem that she had faced so far.
"The healthiest solution," a scientist said, "is one that protects both people and nature."
He described new filters that could make the waste far less harmful.
Aya realised that the best stories rarely have a simple hero or villain.
She wrote down every fact carefully, giving space to each honest voice.
As she left, she wondered whether the town would choose the river or the .