When there is heavy rains on the steep road of Sandra Buscellot in Northern Belgium, Macchelen, the water torts run towards the door in front of it. Twice in recent years, the water has increased to the threshold – once the flood in his house has decreased.
“Once the water is in your house, it is too late,” Busselot told DW. “You can never sell your home again at a good price.”
The aging sewer system of the city cannot withstand rapid rapid rainfall, causing flooding on the road.
This is a problem that people on the face of the Flanders region. The country’s most densely populated and urbanized region, it has the highest degree of urban dispersion in Europe. Many of the sealed surfaces release rain water, increasing the risk of floods.
Busselot, a Mechonon resident for 20 years, has seen the weather at a higher peak. She and her husband no longer feel safe and are considering moving forward. “We like our home,” he said. “But I am not sure it is smart to live.”
Along with the flood, drought is becoming more common. When she went inside for the first time, the rainwater tank in her garden will be dry at the end of August. Now, it is often empty by May – sometimes April too.
“We have a garden that is very deep and wet, but in the last few years it is very dry,” he said.
Flanders is replacing rivers
This part of Flanders is known for its wetlands, marshes, temperate sea climate and continuous rain. But the region now face two extremes: DrowHt and excess water. The river scalt and its tributaries remain important arteries for the local economy, yet centuries human engineering has changed its natural flow.
The generations of farmers expanded their fields by creating a pointer – the land received from the water by constructing a dike to sink the submerged area for agriculture. Therefore, thesis intervention has contributed to today’s flood problems.
“We took a lot of space from the river,” said the infrastructure chief Hans de Pretter in the Flemish waterway, which manages rivers and canals in Flanders. “We had to give back some places.”
After havoc in the 1970s, Officials launched the Sigma scheme, The first comprehensive flood management strategy of the region. This added hard infrastructure search to add dikes and quizes with controlled flood areas, which act as buffers, protect the upstream area from the worst condition. Over time, the plan has been upgraded to deteriorate climate change.
Over the last 20 years, hundreds of kilometers of new and reinforced dikes and quaes have created bees, including Antwerp, the rhetoric, the largest city of the river, and the re -installation of the scalt quoge in the regional hub.
At the same time, some areas have been “depalling” – removing the internal dike to give more rooms to the river. Thousands of acres of farm were excluded to create a flood area and nature reserve, a step that faces an initallic resistance.
People did not see any benefit earlier, and the farmers were unhappy. Even with compensation, “they don’t like to lose the ground,” Dirk Gorrek, a lifelong resident of the village of Cruibeke in Funders, told DW.
‘More and more good’
The Sigma Yojana now attracts visitors around the world, who want to learn about its climate adaptation methods and how to apply them at home. Some delegations focus on the management of public communication or opposition. “They are trying to find out what we are doing and how we’re doing,” said Flemish Waterway, a project engineer Stephan Nollet said.
Gorrek, which is a local tour guide, remembers the early days of the program. “Initially, everything was closed. We could not walk there. The area’s experience was very negative, and people were very high against it,” Heer said.
Officials say they used the outreach targeted to win the residents. “If we have a holistic information of evening, only those who are against those who are against and will protest,” Nollet said.
Instead of large meetings, he started with nature organizations, approached individual groups, and took time to talk to people. Finally, the local people were shaped only by discussion, but being able to use the location for entertainment, there was beautiful, vibrant nature within learning and access to its history.
“Even the farmers accepted it over time – mostly because the compensation they received was appropriate, and especially because it was for more good,” Gorbeck said.
Similar projects are now running on the outskirts of Mekelen, where the local environmental organization is restoring the Naturpant Wetlands. Project coordinator Amelia Ileewa said that Wetlands can catch 200 Olympic swimming pools, storing water during heavy rains and gradually release it in a dry period.
Thus the city is separating rainwater from sewage to replace pucca areas with green places to prevent the overflow of the storm and to soak water in the soil.
But there is suspicion. Iliva said that some residents “do not understand that we are trying to stop the floods by making nature more wet.” He said that clear communication, visual results and community participation are important.
Some residents say that employed action is ‘not enough’
Busselot said that the city supported anti -flood measures, but she worries that the discovery of action as an action is “window dressing” only as action is opening and applying more greenery.
Here in his two decades, he has disappeared from his neighborhood to make a way to build. “It is like a double standard at the end,” Busselot said.
At the same time, he said, new development closing high buildings together, implicating the heat. He said, “We see a lot of projects in the city, where they build very long buildings close to each other. And, with those high walls, all the heat stages in the city,” he said.
For most parts, she thinks that people do not worry real about potential catastrophe, until the water is at their door. “I think people are worried when something happens.” “But then they forget, and the next day they are busy with other things.”
But this area needs to use each tool at its disposal to prepare and prevent them for disasters, Busselot said. Marsh “is a very good response,” he said. “But I think it’s not enough.”
Edited by: anke rasper
