Alders: ‘cheated’ by the NAM

Through Claudia Kammer and Mark Middle

“Confidence comes on foot and goes on horseback, but here the horses have run very hard,” Hans Alders told the parliamentary inquiry committee in The Hague that is investigating gas extraction. The former National Coordinator Groningen (NCG) talks about the breached trust of residents in Groningen, who were told in 2018 that the reinforcement of their homes might not go ahead after all. Earlier, they had received a letter saying their homes were unsafe because of the earthquakes. “Try to imagine that letter fell on your mat,” says Alders. “What does that mean? Every night you put your child to bed in an unsafe house.” He thought it “unthinkable” that he would go back to those people and say: it is different. How could he do that “in a situation where no one believes anyone?”

Also read: How Wiebes lost the confidence of the Groningers

It is the fifth week of the parliamentary inquiry, and for the first time the small public gallery in the Logement in The Hague is almost full. Fourteen people came to this annex of the House of Representatives to listen to Alders, who angrily resigned in 2018. He resigned after the then minister Eric Wiebes (Economic Affairs, VVD) decided to largely stop the reinforcement of houses. Wiebes wanted to overturn the operation that Alders had set in motion since 2015, because he had just taken the far-reaching decision, with the approval of the entire Rutte III cabinet, to turn off the gas tap before 2030. Wiebes expected that fewer houses would then also have to be reinforced.

Surprisingly, Alders was quite able to follow Wiebes’ reasoning. He hadn’t been against investigating what stopping gas extraction would mean for the reinforcements. He did think that the three projects he had already started should continue. Because “it wasn’t just about stones, but about people’s homes,” says Alders.

That was also the angle from which he had always approached reinforcements, he says. Not all of them inspect and strengthen individual houses, which could create inequality and jealousy between residents, but work ‘area-oriented’, which also immediately tackles the quality of life in villages.

Cracks in the collaboration

The Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM), which won the gas and was therefore also liable for the risks, initially seemed to agree. But in the course of 2017 there were cracks in the collaboration. He was “cheated,” Alders says. For example, he found that in a row of houses that was to be completely renovated, one house had been inspected and the other had not. And the reinforcements did not progress either, because the NAM meddled with “fabulous details” and sometimes refused to pay.

At the ministry, doubts grew whether Alders was reinforcing the right homes. This was because the NAM calculated on the basis of its own model that all kinds of homes were unsafe that had not been included in Alders’ reinforcement projects. That had “tramped his soul.” When he started, there was no one who knew which houses were safe, so he had that investigated. “Had there been a list, everyone would have driven there to get to work,” he says. But which houses are unsafe, “we didn’t know that then and we don’t know that now.” When Wiebes decided to take matters into his own hands, Alders drew his conclusions. Because he sat with his back to the audience, people couldn’t see how sorry he was that things had turned out this way.