Damages up to 60,000 euros will be paid out ‘normally’ in North Drenthe from 1 January 2024 and outgoing State Secretary Hans Vijlbrief is not a fan of the plan to extract the cushion gas from the Gas Storage Langelo (UGS Norg). With this, Vijlbrief says nothing new, but most of those present tonight went home with some confidence after a conversation in the village hall of Een.
State Secretary Vijlbrief was there at the invitation of the Drenthe D66 parties. In the context of the House of Representatives elections and in the context of ‘listening to the soft voice’, as the South Hollander himself calls it. “I feel like Santa Claus,” the policymaker joked when he was placed in the middle with about forty interested parties prior to the conversation.
The songs were not forthcoming, instead Vijlbrief could count on some critical questions from the modest Eener room. “How can the government regain the trust of residents, when so much went wrong?”, began Wisse Hummel, chairman of the Temporary Mining Damage Working Group One (TWME). “By, among other things, coming into these kinds of rooms a lot and having conversations,” said Vijlbrief. “But also mainly through actions.”
One of these acts is to give the area around the gas storage in Langelo, which also includes Een, the same rights as the rest of the ‘effect area’, as the area where gas extraction can cause damage is called. The coveted reverse burden of proof returns and damages up to 60,000 euros will all be paid out in the area from 2024. But what about damage that has previously been rejected? “They probably have to make a new report,” thinks Vijlbrief. “That seems the most effective to me.”
Gijs Wevers from Roden is one of the damage reporters from the area around Langelo. The 65-year-old says he has seen his house ‘wither away’ for years. “Experts who were sent indicated that my damage could not have been caused by the 2012 earthquake in Huizinge, not by subsidence and not by the gas storage. But in the meantime I am dealing with the damage.”
“But this ends,” responded Vijlbrief, who understood that victims like Mr. Wevers do not take that promise at face value. “But when I say that, it is true.”
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