2023-08-07 16:35:00
In 2017, a farmer operating several plots in Baulers, on the side of Longue Bouteille and Alzémont streets, received a letter from the City. This recommendation recalled the floods and mudslides of the previous year and the current update of the municipal anti-flood plan.
The City told this farmer that he had planted potatoes on plots listed in sensitive areas. He was therefore asked to take measures to stop potential mudslides.
“In the event of insufficiency of the measures taken or in the event of no written response on your part, we will be obliged to impose on you the implementation of measures by a police order in order to preserve the security and the public tranquility, specified the courier. If you do not comply with this decree, the measures will then be taken at your expense, risk and peril.”
The farmer replied that on one of the plots, it was not possible to plant the potatoes in the direction perpendicular to the slope. Moreover, in thirty years of operation, there had been no problem…
A vision challenged by the City, which called the farmer to a meeting. But common ground might not be found and in 2021 once more the farmer was urged to take action, putting up straw bales to hold back the mud.
This formal notice, which had no effect, prompted the mayor, Pierre Huart, to issue an order on June 17, 2021, requiring the operator of the plot concerned to act within ten days. Following this, straw bales were placed, but not everywhere.
“The Civil Code does say that the lower bottoms must receive the water coming from the upper bottom, then reacted the City in an email. But, given the arrangement of the furrows towards the houses, a worsening of the upper bottom is to be noted, which the Civil Code prohibits.”
Implicated, the farmer took a lawyer, and the latter clarified that his client did not intend to make additional adjustments, the measures imposed being also considered “disproportionate and extremely costly”.
Going as far as the Council of State, the farmer demanded the cancellation of the mayor’s decree. The decision has just fallen.
The highest administrative court considers that it was up to the City to substantiate the existence of a threat to public order, justifying the measures ordered. But that no document in the administrative file establishes “the reality, the extent and the gravity of the damage” caused by the mudslides from the plots concerned, for four dwellings located nearby.
And that, moreover, there is no evidence to support the relevance of the placement of straw bales along private properties. The reasons for the decree of June 17, 2021 being considered imprecise, it is canceled.
And it is the City that will bear the costs of the procedure, i.e. several hundred euros.
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#Nivelles #mudslides #administrative #formalism
