A bulb grower in Smilde has been ordered to pay a penalty of 25,000 euros by the highest administrative court in the Netherlands for discharging water contaminated with pesticides into a ditch.
The Council of State determined this today on appeal. In the final ruling, the highest administrative court fully agrees with the Drentse Overijsselse Delta Water Board that imposed the fine.
With the previous penalty decision, the water board wanted to prevent wastewater from cleaned lily bulbs from flowing through the field into the ditch. According to the lily grower, the water board went into it with a straight leg. There would be no deliberate discharges. The grower felt the fine was unjustified and exorbitantly high. He experienced it as a punishment.
The water board imposed the fine after a company employee dug trenches without consultation to drain contaminated water from the wastewater basin of a lily bulb cultivation field. According to the Water Board, the water contaminated with pesticides ended up in the ditches and a main waterway.
The Council of State points to an inspection report in which the supervisor established that the employee did not separate the main and final rinse water when rinsing the harvested lily bulbs. A lot of contaminated rinsing water ended up in the bulb field because the wastewater was sprayed on the field with a sprinkler system. Some of that water flowed back into the ditches.
In short, a justified penalty for the lily bulb grower. Earlier during the lawsuit in The Hague, a spokesperson for the water board said that the bulb company had a long history of violations and that things went wrong again and again. The fact that things are now improving, the water board found no reason to waive the quarter-ton fine.
The bulb grower said in The Hague last January that he has taken many environmental measures in recent years to limit inconvenience to local residents and the environment. “We have built a place for €100,000 where we clean our machines. And in collaboration with a research agency, we regularly take samples in the ditches and main waterway to see whether and how much residue of crop protection products are in the water.”
However, he will have to pay the fine of 25,000 euros.
