Dive the North Sea Clean FoundationA team from the Dive the North Sea Clean Foundation
In association with
Omrop Fryslân
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 10:50
More than five years after the MSC Zoe disaster, a list has been made public with 6,000 places on the seabed where there may still be junk.
The government has prevented publication of that list for years, but after a long legal battle it must now be made public. “We are very happy with that, because now we can search much more specifically,” responds Ellen Kuipers of the Wadden Association at Omrop Fryslân. “Even if it is five years later, things will definitely have changed on the seabed.”
On New Year’s Day 2019, the MSC Zoe lost 342 containers in stormy weather. Some of it burst open. Rijkswaterstaat, Natuurmonumenten, fishermen and volunteers have fished a lot of junk out of the sea in the time since. Clean-up actions have also taken place on many beaches.
Yet experts estimate that about a quarter of the waste, about 800,000 kilos, is still in the sea. The government labeled this as ‘litter’ and saw no need to clean it up, to the anger of the Wadden Association. “The North Sea has become a waste heap,” Ellen Kuipers previously said at Omrop Fryslân.
Scanned with sonar
The fact is that soon after the disaster a list was made of 6,000 places where waste is found. The MSC Zoe company had these Master Target List (MTL) drawn up. The shipping company had previously scanned 3,000 km2 of sea area with sonar for lost cargo and identified 6,000 objects on the seabed.
On June 24, 2019, Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen informed the House of Representatives that this list existed, but she refused to make the data public because it could contain ‘confidential company data’.
It is thanks to a group of Leiden students that the list is now made public. The students of the Leiden Advocacy Project on Plastic (LAPP) help non-governmental organizations such as the Wadden Association with legal issues surrounding plastic. In this case, the LAPP repeatedly – and ultimately successfully – invoked the Open Government Act (Woo).
CleanUpXL
This is good news for the Wadden Association. The association previously set up the CleanUpXL project together with the North Sea Foundation, the Frisian Environmental Federation, the Duik de Noordzee Schoon Foundation and a number of salvage companies. The goal: to clean up the remaining 800,000 kilos of waste from the seabed within five years.
In practice, locations on the list may also contain very good stuff that has previously fallen off other ships, Kuipers admits. But that doesn’t matter with this project. “It’s about removing junk from the seabed,” she says.
It is a benefit that the clean-up crews can now get to work in a targeted manner. But Kuipers sees another advantage of the publication obligation that the government now has. Because this applies not only to the MSC Zoe, but also to future disasters. “The shipowner and the central government must immediately make public what exactly is in those containers and where they are located. The possible impact on the environment is even part of this.” she says. “This is really a very important statement.
2024-04-10 08:50:19
#years #MSC #Zoe #disaster #clear #mess #lies
