During a bicycle excursion on Saturday past houses with mining damage in Norg, sarcasm was not in the air. “That crack was therefore caused by Sinterklaas.”
“You can see the nicest cracks on the side!” Tour guide Sytze de Jong himself is shocked by his enthusiasm, because the homeowners Peter and Martine Blansjaar are right next to him and they don’t like the cracks at all. “I mean, of course, the most visible cracks!”
Underground gas storage
It doesn’t matter, the Blansjaar couple are happy to explain what a situation they all had with the mining damage to their home. The underground gas storage at Langelo causes movements in the soil, causing damage to many houses in and around Norg. And anyone who thinks that the Institute for Mining Damage Groningen (IMG) can solve all this perfectly, will be disappointed.
Sytze de Jong and Linda de Boer have become experts in this field against their will. They themselves had damage and did not let themselves be sent with a bunch in the reeds. They are well-educated and De Boer knows the administrative world well, as a civil servant at the province of Friesland, and was able to obtain a lot of information via the Open Government Act (Woo). That is why De Jong and De Boer offer their fellow villagers help, because not everyone is so well versed. They set up a bicycle excursion on Saturday to (once again) make city councilors aware of what went wrong.
De Jong and De Boer in turn enlisted the help of Feiko de Vries. “I am the fourth generation in my family’s construction business,” he says. “And I come from Joure. I don’t know anyone here and can therefore advise and assess independently. If I see that it is not mining damage, I will say so.”
People on the roof
The villagers resent the arbitrariness at IMG. “I received compensation for my damage, my neighbor did not,” says De Jong. “The argument was that people would have walked on his roof. Well it was like Sinterklaas when he heard this. So we said that the good holy man must have been on the roof with his fungus.”
That is what stings many villagers: one receives a much larger compensation than the other. Some don’t even get anything. Without being able to find a logical explanation for it.
File letter
Still: the often acclaimed State Secretary Hans Vijlbrief (D66, mining) has been in control for the past two years. He ensured that the reversed burden of proof also applies in Norg and the surrounding area: only if another cause for damage can be clearly indicated, a building owner is not eligible for compensation. Up to a damage amount of 60,000 euros, IMG no longer needs to carry out complicated investigations. De Boer is hopeful that the cold has largely disappeared. “But there was just mismanagement,” she says. “And there must be recognition for that.”
keep the Netherlands warm
By closing the gas bubble at Slochteren, underground storage will only become more important to keep the Netherlands warm, says De Jong. “Suppose you have a December month in which it freezes hard, but at Christmas it is again 10 degrees above 0. Those first weeks they then remove gas from Langelo, but after that they want to refill the storage quickly, in case it is in February. will freeze again. Movements will increase.”
Nanda Emmens (VVD) is one of the council members present. Will she succeed in bringing the matter to the attention of her own party? She sighs. “You really have to see it here to know what is going on. We often invited our group, but the enthusiasm was low. Very disappointing. It may go wrong with your policy, but then face the consequences.”