The deepening of the Almelo-De Haandrik canal led to more than four hundred damage reports from local residents. Six years later, many of them are astonished at how the province of Overijssel is handling that damage.
Just before Pakjesavond 2018, Anouk Schimmel (41) remembers it well, the chimney sweep came. Her daughters, who were 6 and 9 years old at the time, still believed in Sinterklaas and the sweeper on duty played along so nicely. ‘Finished just in time, so Piet can still get through’, he said after business is done.
How different was the chimney sweep’s message a year later. At the beginning of 2019, the first doors in the former farm of Schimmel and her husband István Greguss (41) started to jam, and cracks in the walls became visible here and there. The couple who had just come to live in the quiet Bergentheim in Overijssel from the Randstad, did not immediately look for something behind it. Until the chimney had to be done again at the end of 2019 and they heard that their house was completely wrong. ‘Ma’am, you can’t fire this winter, your whole chimney is blown.’
The couple is one of the more than four hundred damage reporters along the Almelo-de Haandrik canal. From 2011 to 2016, parts of the more than 30 kilometer long branch of the Overijssels Canal were deepened and widened. In several places sheet piles were vibrated into the ground with some force and underground reinforcements (flap anchors) were installed with heavy artillery. All more than four hundred damage reports were made in the period after the work started, but the province maintains that not all damage is the result of this.
‘The question is whether our house can remain standing’
Mental complaints, divorces, burnouts: where houses are still being propped up, many victims along the canal have already collapsed. In the face of all formal procedures, the first households, including Schimmel and her husband, are challenging the province’s claims settlement through the courts. Because how is it possible that a building inspection at the time of purchase in October 2018 revealed only 1,500 euros overdue maintenance, but they are now looking at more than 200 thousand euros? And then the price tag for repairing the foundation has yet to come.
‘Our lives have stood still for years,’ says Schimmel at the kitchen table. ‘We wanted to completely renovate it here, but I’m not going to paint a wall in this condition, because the question is whether our house can remain standing.’ She points to the fungus in the ceiling, through which the rainwater sometimes flows in. The leakage is the result of subsidence: the two daughters sleep under an undulating tiled roof. Judging by the crack gauges on the wall, the ground under the house has not yet settled.
Echoes from Groningen
Groningen lessons from the gas file do not seem to have been learned along the Overijssel canal. Such as: a claim settlement in which it must be determined on a case-by-case basis who is liable can cause more stress and frustration than the damage itself. In addition to taking four claimants to court, another eighty others have filed protests with the province against the amount of compensation. Because for many, much higher amounts came from an independent counter-expertise than from the investigation by the bureau sent by the province.
Another ultrasound from Groningen: can the cause of the damage – in this case the province – also deal with the damage? Responsible commissioner Bert Boerman believes that sufficient ‘guarantees have been built in’ to ensure that the claims settlement process from the province is impartial. The fact that they view the state of affairs differently along the canal is partly because the province acknowledges liability with only 115 of the more than four hundred claimants.
It is recognized, for example, that leakages have occurred due to dredging that is too deep and that the changing groundwater level has led to subsidence in some places along the canal. While in other places the drought would be the culprit. The province uses two Deltares reports as the most important substantiation.
Reverse burden of proof
Stefan van Baars, emeritus professor of soil mechanics and foundation technology, has been very critical of the province for years. This is partly due to the conclusions distilled from the Deltares reports, which he believes are full of assumptions and inaccuracies. According to Van Baars, the leak dredging of the channel bottom has indeed led to wetting in a few places. But in other places, in his view, not drought, but the new and longer sheet piles cause drying out and subsidence of the soil, and thus the damage.
More importantly, Van Baars, like the residents, thinks that it is far too coincidental that houses along the canal were damaged en masse after work on the canal. He says: let the province come up with a good explanation why more than four hundred houses were suddenly damaged in quick succession. According to him, the burden of proof that the not through the canal should lie with the province, instead of citizens having to demonstrate that it is there well comes through.
The house of Schimmel and her husband falls into the category ‘not caused by the canal’. ‘If our damage is caused by so-called background desiccation, why are houses further away from the canal not bothered by anything?’, Schimmel wonders. “And why dehydration?” she says in her swampy backyard. “It just got wetter here.”
‘Coulance’ leads to new annoyance
The province may not consider itself liable, but the couple will receive part of the 40 million euros that the province has reserved to settle the damage along the canal. Out of ‘leniency’, a subsidy pot has been opened for all houses with damage that has not been determined to have been caused by the canal. As a result, Deputy Boerman believes that his province is doing more than is strictly necessary for the residents along the canal.
For many it is just a new source of annoyance. For example, the damage at Schimmel and Greguss would amount to 80 thousand euros, according to the loss adjuster who sent the province. Their own counter-expert came to more than 200 thousand. Where other second opinions were honored, the province pushed these aside.
The province does not want to comment on individual cases, but in a response, Boerman’s spokesperson says that in many cases the differences in damage amounts are due to inflation and because the counter-experts have used different starting points. For example, the province is restoring houses in the state of 2010.
Deputy Boerman personally visited Schimmel and her husband last year. He showed concern for their situation, but the pellet stove he promised to survive last winter is still not in their house. And so the family is in for a very bleak winter, because in addition to the drainage of the wood-burning stove, the underfloor heating has also failed now that the tiles show height differences of up to 8.5 centimetres.
Schimmel doesn’t quite know how to proceed. ‘It’s no use heating anyway, because with cracks in the wall, the heat goes out in no time,’ she says. ‘We’re looking forward to this gas price.’