Hundreds of objections from Winschoten and the surrounding area have been submitted to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (EZ) in The Hague against the adjustment of the update of the current Heiligerlee extraction plan.
So it concerns the extraction of salt in and around Heiligerlee. Salt extraction company Nobian has several caverns there. Nobian had requested an adjustment, because new calculations and based on a study carried out in 2022 now take into account a subsidence of 24 centimeters. And not twenty centimeters when the permit was granted in 2009.
Martiniplaza of Winschoten
State Secretary Hans Vijlbrief has now granted the permit, but numerous objections have now been submitted. Normally, objectors have to report in The Hague, but due to the massive number of objections, the ministry has chosen to come to the North, says Harm Vos. He is spokesperson for the Residents’ Interests Lanengebied/Zuiderveen foundation. Colloquially also called My and Thine interest.
According to Vos, the place of the hearing is Martiniplaza in the city of Groningen. “We also think something about that and we have indicated that. We think you should have something like this in Winschoten. We have even mentioned locations, such as Halte Democratie where the municipal council meets. Or the event hall of the adjacent Harbor Jazz Club. You can’t allow people to travel en masse to the city for an hour on a Friday afternoon. Especially because Groningen will be closed to traffic from that date.”
The municipality of Oldambt has also indicated through its official Silvana Moed that a hearing in Winschoten is the ideal place. “But until Friday afternoon I did not have anyone from the ministry on the phone to talk about the location.”
Moed says that a possible 24 centimeters of subsidence in the area ‘is the darkest scenario’. “But that would mean an additional 20 percent decrease,” Vos calculates.