Common use of Command and Control Clause in Contracts

Command and Control. As we have seen, early environmental policy in the Netherlands was based on the Nuisance Act of 1875. Its main instrument to control danger, damage and nuisance caused by industry was a licensing procedure. In that sense, the Nuisance Act was the direct precursor of the specific, so-called ‘sectoral’ laws dealing with water pollution, air pollution, waste and noise, among others, that were enacted from the late 1960s in response to growing environmental concern. Competent authorities as well as procedures were different for each of these Acts. While municipalities remained responsible for granting licences to a large number of small polluters, predominantly under the Nuisance Act, competences with regard to larger and more complex installations and processes were concentrated at the provincial level. Authority for the Air Pollution Act (1970), for instance, lay entirely with the provinces. The Surface Water Pollution Act (1969) is an exceptional case in two respects. First, it is administered jointly by the semi-autonomous water boards (mainly regarding the smaller water courses) and the regional branches of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (larger water courses). Second, it was the first, and for a long time the only, environmental law that made use of a substantive regulatory levy, which was highly successful in curbing organic discharges into surface water (cf. ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 1983; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 1994; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 1997b: 87–92). Only from the second half of the 1990s were ‘green’ taxes applied more widely in the Netherlands (▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, 2002: 74–75).