Manmade quakes force Dutch to face future without gas
ZEERIJP, NETHERLANDS — When Nienke Bastiaans fell in love with and bought a 17th-century thatched house in a rural Dutch village, there was one person who warned about possible earthquakes due to gas extraction.
"Nobody listened to him," she said.
Now, 20 years later, thousands of homes in the northeastern Groningen province are facing reinforcement or even demolition because of hundreds of small tremors caused by decades of gas extraction. The scope of the problem is forcing the Dutch government to confront the prospect of a future without locally produced gas and lucrative gas tax revenue years earlier than previously expected.
Bastiaans and her husband Tom Robinson just had the entire front wall of their home reinforced — paid for by the gas extraction company — and two chimneys replaced because of fears that another tremor could send them crashing through the roof.
The work was completed shortly before a shallow 3.4-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 8 directly under their village jolted the region and rekindled calls for the government to end gas extraction. The quake — the most powerful to hit the region in five years — triggered nearly 3,000 reports of property damage, including a long vertical crack in Zeerijp's historic church tower.
Thousands marched in Groningen on Jan. 19 to protest the gas extraction-caused earthquakes.
Much more: http://www.wral.com/manmade-quakes-force-dutch-to-face-future-without-gas/17295529/
More photos at link:
A crack in the wall of a farm in Hunzinge, northern Netherlands, Friday, Jan. 19, 2018. More than 3,000 homes in Groningen province are facing reinforcement or even in some cases demolition because of a series of small tremors caused by decades of gas extraction and the Dutch government is being forced to confront the possibility of a future without locally produced gas years earlier than expected. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
