On Tuesday, Tepco said it knew that a drainage ditch running near the contaminated reactor buildings has been showing high levels of radiation and that rainwater running there has been flowing into the seas since last spring. Hiroshi Kishi, chairman of the federation, urged the minister and Tepco to thoroughly explain why the company had not informed the public of this issue, to implement measures to stop the leak and to strengthen radiation monitoring of the sea. Naohiro Masuda, who heads Tepco’s decommissioning unit, apologized Thursday for the failure to disclose the information and said that decommissioning Fukushima No. 1 may be delayed. “To make progress with the decommissioning effort and solve the tainted-water issue, the trust of the people in Fukushima is the most important thing. We’ve been working with that in mind, but unfortunately, we have damaged that trust,” Masuda said. ... The company said Wednesday it had not thought the information needed to be disclosed, citing a lack of data from seawater samples taken about 1 km from the drainage outlet indicating the levels of radiation in the sea around the ditch have spiked visibly. Masuda also said that Tepco had thought Fukushima Prefecture residents and the general public were more interested in information on other risky decommissioning tasks, such as managing the hundreds of water storage tanks and removing tainted water from the underground trenches connected to the Fukushima No. 1 reactor buildings.