The country’s highest administrative court does not agree with the Groningen arable farming family Clevering that the construction of a new agro-logistics ring road around Warffum would be unnecessary and nonsensical.
According to the Council of State, the new ring road will significantly relieve the burden on the narrow and historic Oosterstraat in Warffum, according to a final ruling on Wednesday. The Council of State fully agrees with the municipality of Het Hogeland that the village street is no longer suitable for the increasingly heavier and wider agricultural traffic.
According to Clevering, it will make little difference in practice, because vans and trucks are still allowed to drive through Oosterstraat. However, the Council of State expects that heavier freight traffic will also use the ring road if it does not have to be in the middle of the village. Clevering is against the ring road, among other things, because it runs over part of the house plot.
84.2 hectares left
According to the arable farmer, this means an unacceptable impact on the accessibility of his house plot and an attack on his valuable arable land. After all, the construction of the road requires a strip of Cleveringa’s agricultural land along the railway. According to the Council of State, Clevering will also have access to all his agricultural land via the new road and will be compensated for the loss of land.
This concerns only 1 percent of its agricultural land. The seed potato grower still retains 84.2 of the total 85 hectares of agricultural land, according to the administrative judge. Furthermore, the Council of State sees no advantages in the alternatives put forward by Clevering. In short, Het Hogeland can put the shovel in the ground.