Farmers dump junk around 14 roads overnight; Road services to claim damages

Overnight, farmers took action in fourteen places on roads in the Netherlands, as far as is known. They dumped rubbish or hay bales, sometimes lit on fire, a spokesperson for Rijkswaterstaat reported. The situation on the road is not that bad on Friday morning. There are no new roadblocks by farmers.

The Rijkswaterstaat plans to recover the damages from the farmers. “It concerns our property that has been damaged. Costs are incurred to restore it. We want to recover those,” a spokesperson for Rijkswaterstaat confirmed. According to him, it already involves hundreds of thousands of euros.

The A1 on-ramp at Lochem was one of the places hit overnight. The situation there is now back to normal, according to the spokesperson. Farmers also dumped rubbish and hay bales on the A7 near Abbekerk, Marum, and Wieringerwerf, as well as next to the Wijkertunnel on the A9.

The spokesperson couldn’t say whether the “junk” was found on the highways or the on- and off ramps. She also couldn’t say whether the road service had cleaned everything up yet. According to the spokesperson, traffic can pass at least, or the junk was left next to the road.

The Rijkswaterstaat will file charges of vandalism to the roads, threats, and defamation, Michele Blom, director-general of the public works department, said on the talk show Renze on Thursday. “Our people are threatened and intimidated, not only our employees but also the contractors we deploy to clean the mess up,” Blom said. “This is really going too far.”