Farmer seats are at risk at water boards

Farmers, companies and nature organizations automatically receive part of the seats on the water board board, the guaranteed seats. After the summer recess of the House of Representatives, GroenLinks and D66 will submit a private member's bill to change that.

Both parties believe that the water board management should be more democratic and therefore want to get rid of the guaranteed seats. Everyone has an interest in water management and that is why everyone's vote should weigh equally, is their thought. According to the television program Nieuwsuur, the PVV, PvdA, SP, PvdD and JA21 are also in favor of abolishing the guaranteed seats.

Good arguments for secured seats
The advisory report came out in June 2020 weighted secured from an advisory committee set up by the government. For the companies category, the committee has questions about the substantiation of the secured seats.

But the report also states that the secured seats for unbuilt and natural areas can be well substantiated. Both have a strong land position and depend on good groundwater management for their functioning. They also make an important contribution to current and future water management, for example as retention areas, the retention of fresh water and raising the groundwater level. In addition, the water board often needs agricultural land to carry out projects (such as ditch maintenance).

Nevertheless, the committee recommended abolishing the system of guaranteed seats within the water board board. Even without the secured seats, their perspectives can come into their own in the water board board. Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management, has not yet taken a decision on this report, but the House of Representatives is now taking the initiative. MPs Laura Bromet and Tjeerd de Groot believe that farmers now have too much power within the water boards.

Water boards do not politicize
LTO Nederland is arguing in favor of retaining the secured seats because they ensure a balanced weighing of interests in the water boards. "Our worldwide famous polder model has its origins in the water boards," says Tineke de Vries, Soil & Water portfolio holder at LTO Nederland on the site. "Further politicization of water board management is not in the interest of citizens, companies, farmers or nature managers. Nor is the loss of specialist expertise and knowledge of the local agricultural area. The secured seats must remain."

Within the Union of Water Boards there is division about the issue, for example, the organization has brief inform the minister. For some of the water board administrators, the system of secured seats is inextricably linked to the functional management of the water boards. Because the appointment of members to the guaranteed seats is through a public process, in which everyone can participate, the proponents wonder what problem will be solved by abolishing this system.

Another part of the water board administrators finds the current system no longer appropriate for this time and believes that the secured seats are undemocratic and difficult to explain. They are in favor of a system in which all administrators are directly elected by the citizen.

Jurphaas Lugtenburg

Is editor at Boerenbusiness and focuses mainly on the arable farming sectors and the feed and energy market. Jurphaas also has an arable farm in Voorne-Putten (South Holland). Every week he presents the Market Flash Grains

j.lugtenburg @boerenbusiness. Nl

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