The relatives of Toon Francken (91) do not have to pay for making a remediation plan and cleaning the soil on the Francken site. The municipality of Zundert held him responsible for the major pollution after one of the largest drug waste dumps ever in Brabant. Francken went to the Council of State because he knew nothing about the dumping. Francken passed away at the end of last year, at the age of 91. His relatives then continued the case and have now been proved right.
In February 2020, the pollution came to light after smelling bad smells. The Brabantse Delta water board commissioned an investigation and it emerged that MDMA, among other things, had been discharged.
Tens of thousands of liters of drug waste
In February this year, the Council of State considered whether Francken’s relatives should draw up and pay for a remediation plan because of the drug waste found. The total remediation of the piece of pasture on Pater Taksweg will cost 500,000 to 1 million euros. It should start next month.
The mayor and aldermen of the municipality of Zundert, which includes Rijsbergen, held Toon Francken, as owner of the land, responsible for the pollution. He was supposed to draw up a remediation plan, but he never did. The municipality then took safety measures itself and wants to recover the costs of this, 70,000 euros, from the Francken family.
The municipality said that Francken himself may have discharged the drug waste on his property and that it then ended up in the ditch. If this were not the case, he could have known on the basis of camera images that drug waste had been dumped.
‘Hard to swallow’
According to Francken’s lawyer, Faton Bajrami, the pollution did not start at all on his client’s property. He states that it was already concluded in 2020 that the contamination had originated in a ditch and that it subsequently spread to Francken’s piece of land. The Council of State agrees with this and also states that B and W have based their judgment on studies that contradict each other.
A daughter of Francken also had her say at the Council of State. “What the municipality has caused in recent years is difficult for me and my family to swallow. I think it’s cowardly that they blame everything on an elderly person,” she also said during the session.
Bajrami says that the heirs are ‘extremely happy and relieved’ now that this case has been put to an end. He also reports that soon after the verdict of the lawyer of the municipality of Zundert, he was told that the attachment, which had been levied on Francken’s property, will be lifted.
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