After fourteen years, the board of Natuurplatform Drentsche Aa has decided to stop. Since 2008, the foundation has been committed to preserving peace and space in the Drentsche Aa area.
Two board members are getting older and the other two combine the foundation with a full-time job. “We didn’t want to find replacements, which requires a lot of work,” says Phillipe Boucher, who was chairman of the foundation.
The foundation was established in 2008 at the time when the Okkenveen-Noordlaarderbos cycle path was being constructed. Residents of Noordlaren and Midlaren discovered that it was impossible to influence plans that affected their immediate environment. “All objections were then rejected. It was said that our enjoyment of living would not be harmed because we would live too far from the cycle path,” Boucher explains. For that reason, a number of people founded the Drentsche Aa Nature Platform.
“The foundation made it possible to give voice to residents’ objections. This gave us legal options to address something.” And it often received help from residents of the area. “We regularly received signals or tips from society. For example, the story came up about plans for a holiday park near Midlaren: ‘Have you heard what that real estate agent wants to do?'”
The Nature Platform did not agree with the original plan and offered the broker an alternative, which he agreed to. “He was later stupid enough to put a number of construction workers to work without final approval. The entire park was then canceled,” says Boucher.
A number of major projects in which the Nature Platform had a major say included the doubling of the N34, preventing the transferium at De Punt and stopping the Into Nature festival in the municipalities of Aa and Hunze, Assen and Tynaarlo. At the latter, Boucher and his board members, for example, prevented a large work of art from being placed in a nature reserve.