Moerdijk must disappear. That is the outcome of Wednesday evening’s city council meeting. This means that the more than 1,130 residents of the village will eventually have to move. “To keep the community intact, we will ensure that there is a place where they can go,” councilor Danny Dingemans promises.
An eventful week for the residents of Moerdijk. Last Tuesday, the municipality told them that the village may disappear to make room for expansion of the port and industrial area. Since then, a dark cloud has hung over Moerdijk.
On Wednesday evening the big word came out: the village of Moerdijk will eventually disappear. Nineteen council members voted in favor of this decision, three against. Most with pain in the heart. Mayor Aart-Jan Moerkerke called it ‘a difficult and painful decision’.
“Another equally suitable location, where there is no village, does not exist in this region.”
To make way for the so-called Powerport project, the village will have to disappear within ten years. “Another equally suitable location, where there is no village, does not exist in this region,” Ine Kuijpers (D66 Moerdijk) said during the council meeting. And so the people of Moerdijk are in danger of losing their village.
Now that Moerdijk is becoming ‘the power bank of the country’, as one resident put it in the council chamber on Wednesday evening, many Moerdijk residents are noticing that the quality of life and solidarity in the village is coming under pressure.
But the developments are necessary and cannot be done without impacting the quality of life, concludes councilor Danny Dingemans. “If you now know that this is coming, you must first guarantee that the interests of residents are being taken into account,” he says. “If we affect people in this area, they cannot suffer materially and financially.”
“You don’t just remove houses, you tear apart an entire community. Moerdijk is more than land.”
In addition to financial compensation, many residents want the close-knit community that the village now has to be kept intact in so-called ‘Moerwijken’ elsewhere in the municipality. “You don’t just remove houses, you tear apart an entire community. Moerdijk is more than land,” says 16-year-old Michelle Hollemans, who speaks in the council chamber on behalf of the young people from the village.
“If there is a large group of residents who want to build a new life together somewhere else, we will see if we can find a new place for that,” promises the mayor. The cultural heritage from Moerdijk may also remain intact there.
On December 1, the municipality of Moerdijk, together with the national government and the province, will make a decision in principle about the preferred direction. Various conditions are then put on the table.
“If those conditions are met, the village of Moerdijk will eventually disappear.”
For example, there must be financial compensation for the residents of Moerdijk who are forced to move. Furthermore, they must be offered future prospects and it must be ensured that the quality of life in the village is guaranteed until the disappearance. “We must continue to maintain control over our area and continue to offer people perspective, in the short and long term,” says councilor Dingemans.
“If those conditions are met, we will choose the East option,” adds Mayor Moerkerke. “And that means that in the long term the village of Moerdijk will disappear.”
You can read all the stories about it here the disappearance of the village of Moerdijk.