The ranger sticks his shovel into the ground. It is Wednesday, a spring landscape is slowly forming in the Brabantse Wal nature reserve. Except for the bare crater where ranger Erik de Jonge (43) stands, illuminated by the sun, surrounded by coniferous forest. Nothing has grown here for five years.
It was the largest drug waste pit ever found on the Brabantse Wal. Since the discovery in 2021, 750 kilograms of drug waste from a cocaine laundry has been removed from groundwater alone – and even more from the ground, although how much is unknown. Now the province of North Brabant, which is primarily responsible for the remediation, is stopping this multi-million dollar operation. It’s up to nature.
The drug waste is largely gone. The levels in the soil and groundwater, which is also used as drinking water, no longer pose a danger to people and the environment. It does not mean that the soil is clean, there are still residues, especially in the deeper soil and groundwater. The province will measure the groundwater in April and October to determine whether the waste has further broken down.
The drug den in Halsteren is not an isolated incident. The province of North Brabant is also cleaning drug-contaminated soil in Bergen op Zoom, Deurne, Boxtel, Someren and Zundert. The province received approximately 6.8 million euros in subsidy from the national government for these remediations. The province tries to recover damages from the perpetrators or accomplices. So far there are only suspects.
The dumpings for which Brabant is known have now spread like wildfire across the Netherlands. The police found more than seven hundred locations with drug waste between 2020 and 2024, with a record number of 217 dumpings in 2024. The figures for 2025 are not yet known. While previously this often involved blue barrels or jerry cans, drug waste is now more often stored underground. Such as on the Brabantse Wal, which makes it difficult to clean up.
A quiet corner without paths
The Brabantse Wal is the most beautiful nature reserve in the Netherlands, according to the forester. De Jonge, short hair and full beard, has been wandering through the area in his green fleece vest for eighteen years. He doesn’t work as a forester, he is a forester. De Jonge loves the drifting dunes on the Brabantse Wal, which used to form the coastline. And from the steep descent through the clay to Zeeland, his birthplace. Along the way you see so much variety: heathland, fens, forests. He has become fused with it.
The ranger rarely visited the coniferous forest, located on an old estate. It was a place to be careful with. There were no cycling or walking paths, it was a quiet corner. The birds and wildlife were in charge. Small group: hawfinches, goldcrests and chickadees. And a lot of them: dozens of sleeping deer and one honey buzzard, the rare hawk that is protected in the Natura 2000 area. At least, that’s what De Jonge thought.
There is a yard near the coniferous forest, the only one nearby in the inhabited world. The owner had a small horse stable, a meadow – nothing special, De Jonge thought, as there are so many of them. There was also an elongated, low building made of corrugated iron, against the drifting dune on which the coniferous forest lies. A cannabis farm had been closed down there when he was a forest ranger. He no longer had any suspicions about it since then, but it turned out that local residents did.
On March 23, 2021, the police raided the property. They discovered a cocaine laundry under the corrugated iron. De Jonge was called. While the officers were clearing the laundry, a sharp odor stung his nose. Not sweet, like the ecstasy labs the ranger saw elsewhere. But chemically, similar to the smell of nail polish remover. It couldn’t come from under the corrugated sheets, the wind was in the other direction. Then the alarm bells went off for him.
The ranger walked through the pine forest again. He saw foliage branches from the oldest forest in the Netherlands, further along the Brabantse Wal. He pulled it away. Underneath was a rough and heavy carpet, similar to burlap, measuring three by three meters. He signaled an officer and together they pulled away the carpet. Metal plates were screwed down underneath. De Jonge pried them loose with a shovel.
Another smoke stung his nose. There was a large hole under the slabs, spanned with beams. The ground was a thick cake of goo. This is very serious, De Jonge thought.
Then it’s a matter of saving what can be saved. Het Brabants Landschap, owner of the land, dug away the visibly contaminated soil. That is an obligation in the event of an environmental problem, the time limit is 24 hours. This is often sufficient, for example in the case of barrel dumping. If they have leaked, remove the soil underneath. But this drug waste pit was of unprecedented size. The forest ranger still does not know how long the well had been used.
Butanone, benzene and isopropanol
His quiet coniferous forest became a laboratory. Ground microphones were placed in the excavation to measure the composition of the soil via vibrations. And to test the groundwater, new monitoring wells, fourteen in total, were repeatedly dug into the ground. Deeper and deeper, eventually more than ten meters, when it turned out that the pollution had penetrated even further into the ground. When a monitoring well went into the ground, so much vapor came out of the ground that the measuring companies said to the forest ranger: just turn it off here.
The pollution appeared to have run into the ground like a funnel, a wide spot under the coniferous forest. It would be a very expensive clean-up, which the Brabants Landschap, employer of the forester, as a private nature organization did not want to pay for. De Jonge showed the construction site to mayors, aldermen, the King’s Commissioner, Members of Parliament and ministers. Retroactively, the cabinet made money available to contribute to the costs of the remediation costs incurred by the province of North Brabant.
Two years after the discovery, the laboratory became a construction site surrounded by fences. A road was constructed for excavators across the hilly terrain to the corner otherwise inaccessible to vehicles. The road was cleared by cutting down four hundred conifers. Terrible, said ranger De Jonge. Maybe he would never see the forest there again, he thought then.
Five hundred truckloads of soil were excavated. The soil ended up in heaps in a meadow next to the well, where it was sorted out. About 120 trucks of highly contaminated soil were transported to waste processing company ATM in Moerdijk. It contained butanone, a solvent. And benzene, part of the gasoline used to wash out the cocaine. But also isopropanol, a disinfectant.
The next step was groundwater, early last year. The polluted water was pumped up through five pipes, together with some clean water. This was combined with a purification plant, specially installed on the construction site. About fourteen swimming pools, the kind you find in people’s backyards, of water were purified. The water was returned to the edges of the crater.
Rye for a new root system
Forest ranger De Jonge helped to close the hole last autumn. Gray sand came above a layer of loam, just like before. And on top of that the characteristic, yellowish drifting sand. Topped with clean soil from the old forest layer. To imitate the slopes in the original landscape, the ranger looked at old images.
Last October there was another drift dune. A box of sand without life, that is. So forester De Jonge then sowed winter rye, which should provide a new root system in the ground. The seeds have germinated, can be seen on Wednesday, and are now taking root. If the grain grows well, it is a positive sign, like a natural thermometer. The whirring equipment at the coniferous forest has disappeared.
His shovel is in the ground, the forester is planting a lime tree. He hears tits, thrushes and blackbirds around him. In the meadow on the way to the drifting dune he saw deer tracks. People are not allowed to come here for the time being. The lime tree – bees love it – has heart-shaped leaves and has deeper roots than conifers. For the forester it feels like a victory over pollution.
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