A small part of the board of the Vechtstromen Water Board wants to stop the NAM pure water factory for ethical reasons. According to them, it is inexplicable that it is precisely a water board that contributes to the fact that toxic waste water from the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij enters the soil in Twente. This is reported by RTV Oost.
Waterschap Vechtstromen is 100 percent owner of the pure water factory NieuWater BV in Nieuw-Amsterdam, Drenthe. The ultra-clean water produced there is sold to NAM for oil extraction in Schoonebeek. This involves 3 million liters a day, which is brought into the ground as steam to get the oil back up in liquid form. The oil is separated above ground and the remaining chemical waste water goes into the ground in Twente.
A small part of the board of the Vechtstromen Water Board wants the supply of pure water to NAM to be suspended until it is clear whether there are alternatives for processing the wastewater.
Erik Jan Meijboom of 50Plus is one of them and Ton Schoo of the Elderly Party also wants that. Schoo and Meijboom do not consider it ethically and morally justifiable that the water board is a direct partner of NAM and operates in the opposite direction to its task.
From dirty to clean and not the other way around
“The task of the water board is to turn dirty water into clean water and we are also successfully doing this on a large scale. Except for the enormous amount of water that comes from NAM. We have a strange relationship with NAM, because we supply that water itself.” Meijboom thinks it is a shame that this is happening, “because it really shouldn’t be. We first have to see what we are doing with the water, before we make it dirty.”
The toxic water goes via a transport pipeline from the oil extraction in Schoonebeek to wells in Twente. There it ended up in old empty gas fields. At a distribution point there is also an injection well that appeared to be cracked after years of pumping water and was then hermetically sealed remarkably quickly. The NAM is working on a final report, a second opinion is no longer possible.
The NAM is currently also investigating the possibility of spraying the waste water in empty gas fields around Schoonebeek. NAM wants to stop this within three years. The city council in Emmen is divided about the plan to spray the waste water into the soil of Drenthe.
Meijboom points to the resistance there is to dumping waste water in Twente. “A majority of the House wants it to stop, the province of Overijssel and seven municipalities in Twente where the waste water is dumped also want it to stop. It cannot be the case that we as a water board just keep helping to clean the Twente soil every day with three million liters. to pollute? In my eyes, that cannot continue.”
Integrity
Erik Jan Meijboom is not only a water board director, he was a member of the Research Council for Government Integrity until five years ago. He believes that his water board should consider various aspects of its commitment to NAM.