Some of the inhabitants of Erica will breathe a sigh of relief after today. The feared solar wall along the A37 highway at the Parc Sandur residential area in Emmen will not come, confirms project leader Okke van Brandwijk of Rijkswaterstaat. This guarantees a view of the open landscape.
Bert Schoenmaker could hardly have gotten a better announcement today. “Fantastic, isn’t it?” the resident of Erica exults when he is confronted with the decision of the province of Drenthe to remove the solar wall of 6.5 meters high and more than two kilometers long from the so-called solar route along the A37. Instead of the solar wall, solar panels are now being installed in a flat arrangement on the route. They barely rise above the crash barriers. “A significant difference,” says Schoenmaker.
‘Don’t scream and act crazy’
He is one of the faces of the Solar Wall A37 NO working group, which from the start put their heels in the sand when it came to the arrival of the solar wall. “We do not disagree with the solar route, but such a solar wall would be great. We have made our voices heard about it every time,” he looks back. And according to Schoenmaker, that went in a normal way. “You can scream and act crazy, but you won’t achieve anything with that. Keep talking to each other”, was the motto of the working group.
An attitude that in retrospect was the right thing, Van Brandwijk also thinks. “This is why you can submit opinions, for example: so that you get clarity,” emphasizes the project leader. The municipal survey about the solar wall also left little ambiguity. Eighty percent of a thousand inhabitants of Erica did not like the arrival of the solar wall. “And we took that outcome into account. The people from Erica made themselves heard clearly and in a positive way. It is important that you conduct such a process with the environment.”
Visualize
Van Brandwijk only saw the protests against the solar wall really get going when digital sketches were used to visualize what space such a solar wall would take up. “Such a visualization is a considerable expense, but I will always advise it again on the basis of this project. Then the complaints really came. And only then could we have the discussion. The open landscape is simply worth a lot to Erica”, he concludes.
The Solar Wall A37 NO working group also visualized this. They tackled it by stacking two sea containers on top of each other and showing what such a thing does to the view. It caused the petition to prevent the solar wall to be signed 1,157 times last September. However, Schoenmaker did not want to count himself rich with this. “I walk in the field near the A37 with the dog almost every morning. And every time I thought: it won’t be that wall, will it? I’m glad I can now let that thought go.”
Establish plan
For the entire solar route, a 42 kilometer route with solar panels from Hoogeveen to the German border, the removal of the solar wall at Erica has hardly any consequences, says Van Brandwijk. The Provincial Executive has today approved the Provincial Integration Plan (PIP) Drenthe solar route and the answers to the views that have been submitted. It is now up to the Provincial Council to determine the plan without the solar wall at Erica.