De Wever: “It is best to take into account the local protest against Ventilus”
He said that on Monday in De Morgen on Radio 1. “The intention is to realize Ventilus this decade. If you ignore the resistance or try to bulldoze it, you won’t get it.”
Ventilus is a new high-voltage line along the E403 in West Flanders that will be crucial for bringing the electricity from offshore wind farms to land. But the file gives the Flemish government headaches. In the region there is strong public opposition to the high-voltage connection, because alternating current is said to increase the risk of cancer and cause visual pollution. Local residents and farmers demand an underground connection, but according to Guy Vloebergh, the intendant appointed by the Flemish government to untangle the knot, this is virtually impossible. According to grid operator Elia, an underground connection also entails an additional cost of billions of euros.
Flemish Deputy Prime Minister Bart Somers (Open VLD) stated in an interview with De Standaard that the route should indeed be constructed above ground. He called the intendant’s report “clear”, the arguments “decisive, scientific and substantiated”.
Procedural Stroke
However, N-VA chairman Bart De Wever believes that the government should better take the concerns of local residents into account. Otherwise there is a threat of a procedural battle, he fears. “The intention would be to realize this this decade. If you ignore the resistance or try to flatten it, you will not make it,” he said in De Morgen on Monday.
In concrete terms, a regional spatial implementation plan must now be drawn up, in which it must be made clear what type of connection will be made. According to De Wever, this is “a collegial decision by the Flemish government”. “Everyone will have to show their colors.”
If an above-ground connection is chosen, according to the N-VA chairman, “a suitable solution” must be found for the affected local residents, “so that they would stop the resistance”. “We will have to find a consensus, or it will be nothing.”