What should be done with Tata Steel in IJmuiden? The reason for the question is the RIVM report that recently caused a lot of controversy. Economist Paul de Hen explores a few solutions, including buying up all the houses in Wijk aan Zee.
Why does a person go to live in Wijk aan Zee? If you follow the activists for clean air in the seaside resort, you will have to conclude that it is a pool of air pollution. The 144 pages thick RIVM-report published recently confirms that the dust that settles there contains more lead and PAHs – potentially carcinogenic hydrocarbons – than is desirable by expert standards. throughout IJmond, but especially in Wijk aan Zee.
All Dutch people are already getting more from lead than desired
At the PAH’s jump, the RIVM writes, also Castricum out once, but that may have been because of the inhabitants’ predilection for open fires. According to the RIVM, we receive more of lead from lead in the Netherlands, is the reasoning. It can harm the development of young children.
Paul de Hen (1946) obtained his doctorate on industrial policy in the Netherlands and was a correspondent in Brussels, deputy editor-in-chief and chief of the economics editors of Elsevier, and editor of Free Netherlands.
Opinion articles submitted are selected by the editors, but do not necessarily represent the views of THAT ONE.
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The blast furnace company Tata Steel is certainly the main person responsible, although shipping through the IJmuider locks probably also plays a role. Action groups in the area have long been calling for the closure, or in any case, downsizing or very drastic and expensive, environmentally-friendly modernization of the blast furnace company. Unfortunately, about 9,000 people still work there.
Is closing Tata Steel an option?
Still want to close? The Optimists of Clean Air IJmuiden argued that there are 14,000 vacancies at Tennet alone – Tennet is the company that connects power stations, wind farms and the like with the distribution companies that bring electricity to the consumer’s home. So those nine thousand people at Tata Steel can easily be retrained. Not entirely nonsense, the steel company in IJmuiden once employed about twenty thousand people, the shrinkage has been absorbed without serious problems. But that was a matter of years of decline, not mass layoffs.
In addition, there is another interest: steel is an essential raw material. If ‘IJmuiden’ closes, more steel will have to be produced elsewhere in the world. This does not bother them in Wijk aan Zee, but the environment is not improving worldwide, while the dependence on steel producers far away is increasing. And the Netherlands is losing an interesting export activity.
Who should bear the costs of modernizing the blast furnace plant?
Then modernize it into an electrical steel company? Someone has to be willing to bear the cost of that. The Indian parent company Tata will not do it, that wants to get rid of its European steel interests. Should the government step in? And is steel produced in this way competitive with the non-dust-free product from elsewhere?
Unlike in villages that were cleaned up with a lot of noise or were threatened with the construction of harbors – Target near Antwerp, Moerdijk – there is the serious health problem emphasized by the residents themselves. Buying them out would be a blessing from that point of view. It’s a miracle that lately houses have been bought. Perhaps the 3 to 4 million euros that it costs – a very rough estimate – to buy up all the homes in Wijk aan Zee is cheaper than the total conversion of the blast furnace company.
Demolition of Wijk aan Zee is also an option
Suggest another consideration. Why not demolish the unhappily located Wijk aan Zee? Only a little over two thousand people live there, which is considerably fewer than those who work at the blast furnace, not counting the people who are indirectly dependent on the blast furnaces as family members or suppliers. It should certainly be possible to buy out such a village gradually so that the residents can find accommodation elsewhere.
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