The environmental permit from pig farmer Pieter Haenen in Sevenum is being withdrawn. That is what the Mayor and Aldermen of the North Limburg municipality of Horst aan de Maas decided on Tuesday. With the decision, the municipality is putting a series of bizarre events at the town hall law, which were a reason for the neighborhood to suspect cheat.
The Commission argues as an argument for the withdrawal that the stables of Haenen on Kleefsedijk 9 do not meet the requirements, and that no pigs have been held for five years.
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Horst’s mystery: was farmer Haenen promised a mega pigsty twenty years ago?
Published last Tuesday NRC About the controversy around the arrival of the Mega Parks stable on the Kleefsedijk in Sevenum. The neighborhood, united in the ‘Kleefsedijk working group’, fought the construction of the stable by farmer Haenen for almost twenty years.
Role Province
The municipality did not want the stable, but the province remained committed to the plans. In his procedures, De Boer was assisted by a former deputy of the province, the CDA player Ger Driessen, and a former alderman of the municipality, the CDA member Leon Litjens, who both acted as his adviser. The state of affairs suggested that the farmer was once promised a stable when he had to sell land for the arrival of a large logistics industrial site, Greenport.
Events in 2021 reinforced distrust in the local government among local residents. In that year, the municipality made a decision about a request to withdraw the environmental permit from De Boer. The municipality exchanged a house number in an official publication, and made an opposite decision that was not announced. Only years later did the neighborhood find out that the farmer still had a valid permit. The municipality could not reconstruct who was responsible for the strange events.
Due to the change and publication of the wrong decision, De Boer was able to continue his plans. Last year, Haenen submitted a new application for the construction of a stable.
The municipality still has to make a decision about that application. Alderman Robert Martens (Spatial Planning, D66) says on the telephone that Haenen, now that he has lost his permit, should make an application for a “completely new establishment”, to which heavier requirements are attached.