When handling damage after three earthquakes in Ekehaar, the importance of residents is not paramount, but that of Mijnbouwbedrijf took. The municipality of Aa and Hunze states that. He claims that the Commission (CM) party opts for the oil and gas winner.
The municipality is very critical of the way in which the committee handles mining damage to earthquake damage in Ekehaar. That village was hit by three earthquakes from 1.3 to 2.2 in October 2023 on the Richter scale. Owners of 66 homes made a damage report.
Aa and Hunze then insisted on a quick claim settlement. In a conversation with the Mijnbouw damage committee, where Mijnbouwbedrijf was also present, she asked to reimburse the damage without extensively looking for the precise cause.
In this way, residents can get money faster to repair the damage and expensive, time -consuming, damage reports are then not necessary. Then the NAM must pay for all reported damage, even if it actually has a different cause than the earthquakes.
The Mining Damage Committee decided, against the sense of AA and Hunze, to determine the cause of the damage on a case -by -case basis. The municipality believes that the NAM had a decisive vote in that decision.
She accuses the committee to work at the service of mining companies, because agreements are made with those companies about the handling of damage. The NAM must also agree if there is a deviation from the regular claim settlement. The municipality of Aa and Hunze wants to get rid of this. She wants mining companies no longer affect the damage settlement, just as happens in Groningen and parts of Northern Drenthe.
Both the Mining Damage and the NAM committee did not think it was necessary to delete the damage investigation. Indeed, there were relatively few claims and it was not about exceptionally heavy quakes, says committee member Margriet Drijver.
Drijver is unhappy about the arrangement of the municipality and an opinion piece of mayor Anno Wietze Hiemstra (CDA) that yesterday in Dagblad van het Noorden stands. The mayor argues for a fairer claim handling.
“I don’t think it’s neat that he did not inform us about the letter and that he says something about a party with which you work together,” says the committee member.
Drijver emphasizes that the committee does its work completely independently and gives binding advice to mining companies on the claim settlement. She is convinced that residents of Ekehaar have received a correct assessment of their damage.
“In Ekehaar we have seen that damage to houses had a different cause, but also that, in a number of cases, those claims have become worse because of the gasquakes. It is difficult to say to what extent. We then give the more damage the benefit of the doubt,” says the committee member.
According to Drijver, Mayor Hiemstra gives false hope with his opinion piece. “He gives his citizens the impression that the damage settlement can get better before them. But if these people go to court, to recover the damage from NAM, they will receive less money through us.”