“I recently had men from Norg at the bar here. They fall under the major Groningen gas field scheme for damage settlement. They receive 10,000 euros for a crack without looking at the cause of the damage.” Double standards, says Popken.
Ekehaar is the first case where CMS must investigate and assess whether damage in an area outside the large Groningen gas field. After the conversation, Hermans acknowledges “that things went wrong and the complaints in the conversation will be included in the evaluation of the Mining Damage Commission.”
Village resident Hanneke Bruggeman believes that a butcher who inspects his own meat and wants Mayor Anno Wietze Hiemstra to ensure that the evaluation does not soon show that it was indeed done wrong and that “learning is learned from it for other cases in the future, without it being resolved in Ekehaar. Then we have been a nice guinea pig for the CMS.” Resident Martijn Marree also has this fear. “The minister just has to solve it now.”
Mayor Anno Wietze Hiemstra of Aa en Hunze has regularly criticized The Hague about the state of affairs in Ekehaar. Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen had to go to Ekehaar twice because there was no movement from The Hague.
After the conversation with Hermans and the residents, he is more gentle. “I was initially afraid that it would be a kind of courtesy visit, but that is not the case. The outgoing minister was well prepared, and I have long been happy with the promise that the criticism will be included in the evaluation and that, if something changes, it will also apply retroactively to Ekehaar.”
When devising a claim settlement for everything that does not fall under the Groningen gas field and Langelo, there was already a lot of criticism at the time. Regional administrators and members of the House of Representatives already feared inequality in claims handling and rules, especially because the miner – in this case the NAM – also has a decisive vote in the Mining Damage Committee.
Marree: “The committee could also have said for Ekehaar: this is an area around the earthquake where all damage cases are more or less the same and, with the approval of the NAM, a generic damage payment can be made without extensive and expensive research.” Because that is also a problem in Ekehaar: the research costs a lot of money while very little is reimbursed.
Perhaps part of the solution lies there, perhaps also in another place, Hermans told RTV Drenthe before her departure. The Mining Damage Commission evaluation should be ready in the first quarter.