Nieuws
Deken van diesel eist slachtoffer. Honderden liters diesel in de Oude Vest gelekt
On Friday evening, Pieter, a volunteer at Stichting De Grachtwacht, noticed a strong smell of diesel, which could even be smelled indoors. The smell turned out to be coming from outside, where a blanket of diesel covered the Oude Vest. The source was quickly traced to an event tent on the Beestenmarkt with a leaking diesel generator. During that Friday, diesel had been flowing into the adjacent canal for hours. Once the oil slick was discovered, it turned out that by Friday evening, the diesel had already spread to the harbor at the end of Oude Vest.
All emergency services were called in, from the fire department and police to the water board and the specialist company Ecoloss. While waiting for them to arrive, an improvised dam of sand was erected with the help of two boys from the scouting club, which prevented further contamination of the canal. Liselotte Rambonnet and Auke-Florian Hiemstra, coordinators of Stichting De Grachtwacht, were also quickly on the scene. The police closed off the area and Ecoloss began cleaning up during the night from Friday to Saturday. Due to the large amount of diesel that has now spread far and wide, the cleaning company has announced that the cleanup will take weeks!
Coot
On the night the leak was discovered, Rambonnet, who also works at the Leiden Region Bird Sanctuary, checked preventively whether the water birds on the Oude Vest had been contaminated with diesel. At least one common coot that had swum through the thick layer of oil had clearly damaged plumage. Rambonnet and Hiemstra managed to fish the unlucky bird out of the diesel-smelling water during the night. The diesel damage means that birds can no longer waterproof their feathers, causing them to get cold and unable to swim properly. The coot was allowed to spend the night in a special heated box for birds in the bridge house of De Grachtwacht on the Marebrug. The next morning, the oil victim was picked up by volunteers from the Animal Ambulance and Bird Sanctuary Leiden Region and later that afternoon he was transferred to the Dee Wulp Bird Sanctuary in The Hague. They are trained in washing oil victims and the coot is now spotless again. The animal ambulance is on the lookout for any other oil victims. The unfortunate man emphasises that an oil spill like this not only causes a nuisance in terms of smell for local residents, but is also harmful to the animal inhabitants of the canal and therefore has a direct impact on our urban nature.
Intervention by volunteers
According to the municipality of Leiden, ‘it only became apparent later that the liquid had also ended up in the water.’ De Grachtwacht strongly disagrees with this statement. In all communications with the emergency services, immediate mention was made of diesel spreading through the canals hundreds of metres from the source. That same evening, oil booms were placed in the water to prevent further spread and absorb the oil. De Grachtwacht has serious questions about how an oil spill like this could have occurred in the middle of the city centre. De Grachtwacht regularly reports sunken boats, resulting in oil leaks. However, they have never before experienced a disaster on this scale, with hundreds of litres of diesel leaking into the canal for hours. Thanks to the immediate intervention of volunteers during the night, many more litres of diesel were prevented from flowing into the canal.
De Grachtwacht Foundation
De Grachtwacht Foundation has been active in Leiden for seven years, organising weekly clean-ups to fish plastic out of the water, among other things. Our volunteers are also alert to other types of pollution, such as oil and diesel. In order to continue its initiative in the coming year, De Grachtwacht is hoping for funding from the municipality of Leiden. By discovering this leak, the organisation has once again demonstrated that they are the ambassadors of the canal, the eyes and ears of our city's waterways, and thus fulfil an important role in Leiden. In order for them to continue their fight for cleaner canals, we must also fight for fair compensation!