Wesel. The SPD wants to know when the city utility’s insurance will pay. If the costs are included in the sewage charges, they do not want to agree.
More than three years after the incident at the Wesel sewage treatment plant, the consequences are still being felt. The SPD faction now wants to discuss the “insurance claim ‘Wesel sewage treatment plant incident'” at the next meeting of the main and finance committee on September 3, as they fear that the costs will be passed on to citizens.
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“We expect a comprehensive presentation of the facts and a statement as to when and to what extent the municipal utility’s insurance will take over the damage settlement,” the Social Democrats wrote in their motion. The background to this is that the budget and thus also the sewage fees for 2025 are currently being worked on: “It cannot and must not be the case that the damage in the sewage treatment plant is again passed on to the citizens of Wesel,” the SPD continued. Rather, the municipal utility should “be responsible for the damage in their sphere and, if necessary, settle the damage through the existing insurance companies.”
The incident in February 2021 resulted in wastewater contaminated with sludge entering the Rhine. A report later concluded that an “extremely rare causal chain” had led to this, meaning that it was a case of “hidden defects” in combination with weather-related influences. The damage amounted to 2.4 million euros, which – as the Social Democrats and other parliamentary groups had been demanding since the incident became known – should not be at the expense of the citizens and should be passed on to the sewage fees. If the sewage fees for 2025 include the damage settlement of the incident, the parliamentary group has already announced that it will not agree to them.
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