After ten years, Bert Middel left the Noorderzijlvest Water Board behind. He says goodbye to his position as dike warden. “It is true, it is no different,” says the still vital Middel. “I have almost reached the ‘fatal age'”, he sighs in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata.
Directors appointed by the Crown, such as a dike warden, must retire when they reach seventy. This also applies to, for example, mayors and commissioners of the king.
And although he had wanted to continue happily ever after, Middel also calls it good to stop. He tastes two flavors when he says goodbye: “It’s good that I’m leaving because I’ve worked for fifty years. It’s time for a new generation, but I also think – to put it my way – a bit shit that it ends.”
The farewell will come on June 30. Despite everything with a good feeling, because he has been able to work for decades as a member of parliament and administrator.
And don’t come to Middel with comments about a boring life as a dike warden. “It may seem that way, because many people do not realize that the country would be completely uninhabitable if we do not do our work. We live in the most dangerous river delta and this country is two thirds below sea level. Without water management it was impossible to live here, to work, there was no farming.”
‘Little water awareness’
It is a sign that there is ‘little water awareness’, as the departing dike warden calls it. “We are heading for the biggest climate crisis there has ever been. Climate change has always been there, but what is happening now is unimaginable. If we don’t take measures and lead the way, it will just be over in a few generations.”
It sits Medium high, because he foresees major problems. And a dike warden or a water board cannot simply prevent that, much more is needed. “There must also be political-administrative support for it and there is partly not.” The more right-wing parties renounce, according to Middel. “I’m a bit faint about that, Grunnigs sees that they ‘nait doun what they motten doun’. But citizens must also realize that it does not only depend on the government: how do you deal with water and with energy.”
“We’ll be fine, and so will our children. But our children’s children, they’re going to have a hard time if we don’t act now. So please, wake up.”
Eight centuries of poldering
The water board is always busy weighing up interests: “Farmers want low water, because otherwise the tractors will sink through the land, and nature wants high water, otherwise nothing will grow. As a dikemaster you spend all day poldering between those interests The water boards have been doing poldering in this way for 800 years.
That is why there are elections and the water board is largely governed politically. “Of course there are no left-wing or right-wing dikes. But choices have to be made in what you can and should do with the money.” Middel finds it fine that the water board board has been made political. “Making choices about the distribution of scarce money, that’s politics.”
From the street
At the end of June, it is then the time to say goodbye, even if it is not entirely heartfelt. But it is not possible to fall into a black hole, although he is no longer allowed to do all additional functions. “I am still chairman of a waste company in Drenthe, Area in Emmen, Hoogeveen and Coevorden. But the thesis I am working on will keep me off the road for another year or two.”
With this dissertation, PvdA member Middel maps out ‘the inner world of social democracy’. Because we know the positions and policies, but we hardly know why people join a political party. “How they experience that, what it does to those people, whether they derive their identity from it, that is a subject that is worth looking at.”
Will it be an insight into ‘the red church’? “Yes, because I’ve been a member of the PvdA for 52 years, so I’ve been with it for a while. And I think I also have some insight into it. But it will be a scientific study, it will not be personal reflections.”