Holland, where's the direction?

In N70, the conservation year 1970, the information on nitrogen that we are talking about now was already known. See the reports on the ageing of the Strabrechtse Heide and De Peel from 1968/1970. How weird that 'we' now suddenly find ourselves in a state of stress, buying out pig farmers and putting construction projects on hold.

Spend the subsidy money and the money we destroy by demolition on good gas scrubbers. The effect is the same or greater, while maintaining good buildings and healthy farms. Isn't the goal 'becoming sustainable'? Unfortunately, the government chooses a different path: demolish successful companies and generate environmentally unfriendly construction rubble. On to the CO2 profit.

With a lot of subsidy, solar energy parks are being built. On agricultural land.  Like the park in Wilp, on 35 ha of perfect agricultural land along the A1 motorway.

The A1 is located on a dike of 5 km, east-west oriented, with a beautiful south-talud; the ideal place for solar panels. But that's where Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management will be cutting grass for a lot of money.

At the same A1, the original dike was made in 1970 with sand that had been sprayed up, we are now stopping the widening work. Why is that? Because the recycled high sand that is now being applied is dirtier than the 100% pure sprayed sand. Under the Pfas regulation it is not permitted to use less clean soil as high sand than the material present. What the roadside of a motorway looks like chemically, well, that's not what we're talking about. Salt loving plants grow in the verge at Kootwijk.

In the meantime, a number of construction companies are going bankrupt again because a sustainability decision is pushed through from one day to the next. Nobody talks about sustainability in relation to human resources. 

Although I think the farmers and builders are right, their way of protesting is too extreme for me. And yet: what Harry and his Potter Society do or don't do in The Hague, or do too late, makes me travel the distance many times over. Now we're panicking, while in N70, 50 years ago, we already knew what was going on.

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Herman Bessels is architect BNA at Bessels architekten & ingenieurs B.V.