The parliamentary committee of inquiry in The Hague called on a resident of Schildwolde on Monday as an example of the misery in which people in Groningen have ended up as a result of gas extraction. At Frouke Postma-Doornbos it started in 2012 after the earthquake near Huizinge with a large crack in the basement floor. After that, cracks appeared in the walls and later the chimney also turned out to be broken and unsafe.
Their house was completely renovated for years. In 2015 alone, the family had 60 different people come over to discuss what needed to be done. “All of Albert and me’s free time was spent on e-mailing, calling, discussing plans, clearing out the house, clearing out, clearing out again,” said Frouke Postma-Doornbos. She developed heart problems, her husband Albert became stressed and their youngest son became depressed. “I have failed as a mother.”
What started with some cracks in walls led to years of stress for many victims of families in Groningen, resulting in health problems, divorces and disrupted family situations. The committee of inquiry this week tried to answer the question: how is it possible that repairing and strengthening houses has become such a mess?
The key figure in the reinforcement of houses was Hans Alders. There were high expectations at the cabinet and in the region when he was appointed National Coordinator Groningen (NCG) in 2015. Alders and his organization had to ensure that the reinforcement of houses – so that people can safely leave their homes in the event of a severe earthquake – would gain momentum. But the interrogation of former top official Maarten Camps showed on Wednesday that there were doubts at the Ministry of Economic Affairs even before his appointment. Minister Henk Kamp (VVD) would have preferred to see an official in that location, not a former PvdA minister who was also associated with Groningen for many years as the king’s commissioner.
Also read: How Wiebes lost the confidence of the Groningers
In addition, the ministry saw little in the way of Alders’ approach from the start. The NCG opted for ‘area-oriented’ reinforcement, while at the same time improving the quality of life in villages. The ministry feared that this would not lead to acceleration, and certainly not to rapid reinforcement of unsafe houses, Camps said during his interrogation.
On his first day of work, Alders noticed that “nothing” had been arranged for the reinforcement operation. There was no knowledge, no people with experience, let alone safety standards that the houses had to meet. There was only one promise from Kamp that Alders had to fulfill: all the buildings would be reinforced within five years. But nobody knew which homes were unsafe. “Expectations ranged from a few hundred homes to 170,000,” Alders said on Wednesday.
Alders was faced with an impossible task, according to his interrogation. He had been given no pot of money and no legal mandate to push through decisions. For every decision he had to get approval from the NAM, which as a gas extractor was liable for the costs. Weekly Alders consulted with the NAM about “fabulous details”.
pause button
Just when Alders had started three major reinforcement projects in 2018, Kamp’s successor Eric Wiebes (Economic Affairs and Climate, VVD) announced that gas extraction would stop by 2030 at the latest. The new minister had concluded that it would only become safer in Groningen if the gas tap was closed.
That decision caused short-lived joy in Groningen, until it became clear that the minister was suspending ongoing reinforcement projects. He wanted to find out whether the reinforcements could now also be reduced. Alders’ projects were shelved. That was the last straw for Alders: he could not bear the fact that he had to break promises to the residents and angrily resigned in May 2018.
At the ministry they all saw it differently. According to former secretary-general Maarten Camps, stopping the reinforcement operation was “a wise choice”. In The Hague it was doubted whether the declining gas yield was still in proportion to the costs of strengthening houses. Money played a role, Camps confirmed.
The day before, Anita Wouters, herself closely involved in the reinforcements as director-general at the Ministry of Economic Affairs at the time, gave a different explanation. Information from “scientists” and other parties would have shown that there were all kinds of unsafe houses in Groningen that were not part of Alders’ reinforcement program. They worried about that at the ministry. Shutting down the reinforcements freed up capacity to tackle those houses first.
Her statement was refuted by Alders, who felt “tricked on his soul” as a result. No one knew which houses were unsafe. “Had there been a list, everyone would have driven there to get to work.” In reality, a reconstruction of NRC, the information that the ministry relied on came from NAM. Information that was distrusted by Alders and the region, because the gas company had an interest in as small a reinforcement operation as possible. But EZK regarded that information as neutral.
At the beginning of 2018, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) already doubted the favorable prospects that Wiebes presented to his colleagues in the cabinet. With the gas tap turned off, only 3,000 homes would need to be reinforced, 4,200 fewer than planned. That would be a saving of 1.9 billion euros. Chris Kuijpers, then a top official at the Interior and Kingdom Relations, called it “wishful thinking” in a note to the then Minister of the Interior Kajsa Ollongren (D66). A colleague of his had called Wiebes’ calculation ‘very optimistic and also not realistic’. Ollongren confirmed during her interrogation on Friday that it had happened.
BZK was right: the reinforcement of possibly 27,000 buildings is now being taken into account. Only a fifth of these have now been reinforced. The acceleration that Wiebes and his officials thought they would achieve never got going. Now, four years later, only 12 percent of the houses labeled as ‘most unsafe’ have been reinforced. Nevertheless, Peter Spijkerman, until recently director of NCG, thinks that the reinforcement can be completed in 2028 without “big crazy things”.
This week, most of the key players agreed that the reinforcement had been approached “too technocratically”. Or as Alders put it: “It’s not about stones, it’s about someone’s home.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of October 1, 2022