Photos now used as evidence for lawsuit about graphite rain on...

Photographer Dirk-Jan Prins has been taking photos of explosions and dust clouds near Wijk aan Zee since 2014. Until now he has been told that they could not serve as proof that steel companies are breaking the law. But that has changed.

The OM is now going to prosecute, reports de Volkskrant. There is now a file with the examining magistrate, who will ultimately make a final decision whether the prosecution will be continued. This file includes photos and an interrogation by photographer Dirk-Jan Prins. He hopes that the judge will force the company to work cleaner.

‘No evidence’

Prins once moved to Wijk aan Zee because he needs clean air. He is suffering from a disease that makes him short of breath. The sea breeze would do him good, he thought. But nothing was further from the truth, the anxiety remained and Prins investigated why.

Because he is a press photographer, Prins started taking pictures of the emissions of the steel company Harsco on the Tata Steel site in IJmuiden in 2014. From the dunes he recorded all dust clouds and explosions. As a concerned citizen, he has now sent hundreds of photos to the Environment Agency, which has to supervise the steel company. But there he always got zero on the application. “Your photos cannot serve as evidence,” he was told.

Two criminal cases

The Public Prosecution Service thinks, unlike the Environment Agency, that the photos are indeed suitable as evidence and informs EenVandaag that there are even two criminal cases in preparation: one about the graphite rains and a second about the blown away of raw materials in early 2018, where particulate matter is. released.

At the time, the Environment Agency already called this incident ‘serious’. Tata Steel is suspected by the OM that the company has acted in violation of the regulations of the environmental permit. The company is said to have spread dust ‘further than the permitted 2 meters from the source’, as stated in the permit.

Huge fireball

In March 2019, photographer Prins was heard as a witness in the particulate matter case. The official report of that witness examination is in the hands of EenVandaag. Detectives told Prins that his photos of 28 July 2018 were taken as the starting date for the criminal investigation. Prince is happy. Finally something is done with his photos, which are always given a date, time and place of recording for each photo.

He describes that particular day in July as a warm summer day when he stood at his permanent spot with his camera at the ready. “I heard a huge hiss, like hearing thousands of snakes hissing. A split second later a huge fireball followed, followed by a black cloud.”

Black dust

Graphite rain emissions have been causing unrest and concern in the vicinity of the plant for years. The graphite is released during the processing of slag, a waste product from steel making. Residents of Wijk aan Zee find dust in their backyard, on the kitchen counter and on their children’s duvets.

For years they have wondered what that does to their health: “Does the dust also end up in our lungs?” Hans van den Berg of Tata Steel has admitted that the graphite rains are indeed harmful to the environment. “We are not a good neighbor at the moment,” he said in 2019. Tata Steel then built a hall, but it turned out to only remove part of the nuisance.

Worried mothers

The RIVM has investigated the graphite rains and found that the emissions can be harmful to young children. A later study by the GGD Kennemerland shows that there is no less than 27 percent more lung cancer in the Tata Steel area.

Mothers from Wijk aan Zee want something to really change in their environment. They recently organized a ‘folding chair protest’ in the middle of the village. “I know more people with lung cancer than with corona, that’s terrible,” commented one of them.