basically it's all about cutting costs at the expense of the environmental damage

This is water that actually touched the exposed core from Fukushima during the disaster, and not the typical water used to cool nuclear cores as had been released for 60 years.

The release is extremely controversial in Asia, there have been riots and sit-in's in Japan and Korea, and accusation of receiving bribes for the organization that testified as to the radioactivity. The price of salt in Korea is inflating as well (people are hording fearing future salt will be contaminated). Korea has set up a program to inspect radioactivity every two months, at 10 potential contact points, despite saying they're OK with the release. Japan has refused all requests for inspection of their treatment methods, nor fully released the details.

This event has been really downplayed in all the English media I've seen, while highlighting China's response as though it alone is being hysterical. Some analyst have speculated that this might have been one of the items Japan requested in the recent meeting with Korea and US at Camp David.