It can make forester Erik de Jonge of the Brabant Landscape terribly angry: illegal drug dumping. He’s already seen dozens of them. “People who just discharge poison into nature for their own gain.” Not only bad for nature, but it can also be dangerous.
Last year, the police found 208 dumps of chemical drug waste left over from the production of ecstasy. It concerned dumping of barrels and jerry cans full of chemicals in nature. Criminals also discharge junk into surface water.
Tons of euros
Owners of the land on which the substance has been dumped regularly pay for the costs of cleaning up this toxic waste. These costs can amount to hundreds of thousands of euros. Municipalities recover the costs from the land owners.
Owners can be organizations or companies that own land, but also private individuals. The previous cabinet made a subsidy pot, but it only contains one million euros. In addition, it pays out a maximum of 25,000 euros per pollution. The actual costs are almost always much higher.
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According to Member of Parliament Ingrid Michon of the VVD, it cannot be the case that private individuals have to pay for the cleaning costs: “That is ridiculous. I want the cabinet to significantly increase the amount that the government has available for cleaning costs. Municipalities are not allowed to innocent citizens here. saddle up.”
A majority of the House of Representatives wants the cabinet to allocate more money to clearing illegal drug waste.
Picking Criminals
Also CDA colleague Anne Kuik: “It is very important that we pick criminals, i.e. take their money, to clean up that mess.”
The confiscation of criminal money has been possible for about ten years. Last year, according to the Public Prosecution Service, criminal money worth 368 million euros was seized. So that should be possible, says PvdA MP Songül Mutluer: “Because you can’t make citizens pay for this.”
The ChristenUnie shares this opinion, says MP Mirjam Bikker: “For those cases where the perpetrators cannot be found, a compensation fund has been set up that victims can appeal to. We want the clean-up costs to be fully covered from that fund. therefore also that there should be no maximum amount up to which cleaning costs for innocent owners are reimbursed.”
It cannot be the case that citizens, farmers and forest managers become the victims of drug dumping by this kind of ruthless wrong pill manufacturers.
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D66 member Joost Sneller agrees, but at the same time hopes for a more structural solution to the problem: “Namely: legalize ecstasy. Then we will be rid of this hassle.” He also sees something in a trial that criminals may deposit their waste at a place made available by the government. They can do that without getting caught. “Then you no longer have a waste problem,” says Sneller.
Polluter pays
PVV MP Lilian Helder thinks it is absurd that municipalities pass on the costs to ordinary citizens: “The polluters have to pay, not the ordinary citizen. So, come on Minister Yeşilgöz, increase the budget for the clean-up costs and safeguard innocent residents from sky-high bills.”
forest ranger for love
Sources around the cabinet expect it to announce this week that the budget of the cleanup fund will indeed increase.
Forest ranger Erik applauds this: “I never thought when I became a forest ranger that this would be my job. I became a forest ranger because of nature, the birds, the animals and not for cleaning up drug waste. spend with which I actually wanted to plant a new forest.”
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