Presentation short abstract

The Meuse River is completely controlled by dams, weirs, dykes and bioengineered implants. In line with this, many deep (former sand extraction) lakes along the Meuse were filled with toxic waste as “nature-based solution”. After years of struggle, grassroots organizations halted this waste dumping.

Presentation long abstract

In 2019, four men from the small southern Dutch village of Dreumel uncovered a major environmental crime occurring practically in their own backyard. A dredging company had been dumping waste and polluted soil into a former sand-extraction pit—a deep lake directly connected to the River Meuse. The Meuse itself has long been transformed into a highly engineered water system: regulated by dams, weirs, dykes, groyns, parallel canals, and bioengineered implants (like fish passages), and continually controlled through real-time digital hydrological modelling. This has turned the river into a “cyborg river”: optimized for shipping and flood management, but leaving its aquatic ecosystems at wreck. In line with this bioengineering, the Over de Maas lake—and many other deep lakes along the Meuse River—was being filled with contaminated soil and granulite, a by-product of gravel-making used in asphalt production that contains carcinogenic flocculants. Officially, the lakes were being “undeepened” to make them more natural, presented as a “nature-based solution.” In reality, the rationale was that large quantities of polluted soil and roughly 300,000 tons of granulite must be disposed of each year, and filling deep lakes with toxic waste had become a profitable business model. The local organization responded by employing citizen science to trace the origins of the waste. They organized protests and amplified their struggle by engaging national media, political parties, and environmental groups. After years of persistent effort, in 2024 the dumping of toxic waste into deep lakes in the Netherlands was brought under much stricter regulations.