The clatter of construction machinery still fills this forested mountain gorge, where legions of men in hard hats busily pour concrete, clear hillsides and erect a huge, unfinished bridge whose concrete supports tower over the valley. Japan's new government has suspended the $5.2 billion Yamba Dam being built here and turned this valley four hours north of Tokyo into a symbolic final resting place for the nation's postwar order, which relied on colossal public works spending. The Democratic Party government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has chosen this dam as the first of 48 national government-financed dams that it wants to scrap, worth tens of billions of dollars. Canceling it is widely seen here as the first major test of the new government's ability to deliver on campaign promises to revitalize Japan's ailing economy by ending wasteful projects and breaking the grip of the central planners in Tokyo's powerful ministries. Decades of pouring concrete have been widely blamed in Japan for cluttering rural areas with needless dams and roads to nowhere. Hatoyama's party has vowed to replace Japan's postwar 'construction state' and the jobs it created with something closer to a European-style social welfare system. But dams are particularly symbolic, because they were favored as a means of flood control and power generation by Japan's central planners, who have dammed almost every major river in the country. The Democrats have run into opposition from an unexpected quarter: the small hot springs town of Naganohara, part of which would be submerged by the reservoir created by the dam. The town of 6,400 residents has put the new government on the defensive. Many residents complain that the town's livelihood now depends on the dam, and particularly the compensation payments and construction jobs that accompany it. 'If the dam gets canceled, how are we going to eat?' asked Naganohara's mayor, Kinya Takayama, who noted that the dam was first proposed 57 years ago. Tempers flared last month, when angry residents rejected an offer to meet the new minister in charge of public works, Seiji Maehara, who visited the dam site. Facing a wave of news coverage sympathetic to the town, Maehara signaled that even after canceling the dam, Tokyo would finish relocation of the affected townspeople and complete the roads and bridges that will link the new neighborhoods on higher ground. 