Five centimeters. A small distance, but unbridgeable for the hamlet of Geelbroek, the Hunze and Aa’s water board and the Prolander permit holder. This afternoon a lawsuit was filed in the Groningen court, with farmers challenging the permit granted for rewetting an area near the Geelbroekerweg.
Since 2010, the province of Drenthe, the Hunze en Aa’s water board and Prolander have been working on a plan to rehydrate an area near Geelbroek and Ekehaar. Part of Geelbroek is already a nature reserve, but rewetting this area will add even more. Not only should nature benefit from this, the area can also serve as a collection point for water during heavy rainfall.
That’s all well and good, according to farmers who have united in Concerned Farmers Geelbroek, but according to them the plans will undeniably lead to economic damage for their companies.
“Onions in May produce leeks,” said Henk Stoffers. The arable farmer goes back to this old proverb to indicate that rewetting would ensure that he can put his onions in the ground later and therefore take a major risk during harvest.
Another farmer present from the area could harvest one cut less grass per year from the land due to the rewetting. “I have a total of five cuts a year, then I would miss a fifth of my income from grass.”
The defendants, the Hunze and Aa’s water board and Prolander, assume that the groundwater level of farmers in the area will not increase significantly. In any case, no more than five centimeters, which, according to experts, will cause ‘no disproportionate damage’.
“That five centimeters is a common limit in hydrology (study of water, ed.),” said expert Eric Blom on behalf of Prolander. He wrote a report on the area, in which this also emerged.
However, the farmers point out the wet situation in the area and state that the water board and Prolander have approached the area ‘model-based’. “You should actually look at the consequences of waterlogging per plot,” said lawyer Bertil Westers on behalf of the farmers.
The discussions that farmers have been having for years with the province, water board and Prolander have not brought the parties closer together. The farmers came up with a plan for a plot exchange, but the province of Drenthe did not believe that the farmers should receive more land than they contributed, as was proposed. The discussions about plot exchange are currently largely at a standstill.
If the permit is granted and farmers still experience damage, they can report it to a counter. But according to lawyer Westers, there is ‘little concrete guarantee’ for compensation in Prolander’s proposal.
In addition, Westers finds it special that there is a plan for damage, while the water board and Prolander think it is impossible that damage will occur. Pim Schriemer (lawyer on behalf of the water board) bases this on years of research by hydrologists. “You cannot rule out all consequences, but that certainly does not mean that the water board has not conducted any research. On the contrary.”
The Northern Netherlands court hopes to make a ruling within six weeks.