2023-08-28 20:11:00
At the brasserie Le Félicien, at the end of a hellish weekend entertaining the artists and people in the shadows of the Les Solidarités festival, the staff is saddened by mountains of dirty dishes. Soiled plates and pots lie in shambles on the carts. “It’s a catastropheexclaims his boss, Alain Lorent. If we can still serve meals, we no longer have clean dishes on hand. We have to close.”
Since Sunday, around 5 p.m., the water has suddenly stopped flowing at the taps of the companies in the economic park and, consequently, at the countless water inlets of the Business Village Écolysin which Le Félicien is integrated.
Within 24 hours, the cut would have deprived the party of its water fountains, which would have generated major health concerns. However, it complicated the life of the last hours of Solidarity, without the festival-goers realizing it. The food trucks, deprived of water, struggled.
The leak also has no connection with the holding of the first edition of the festival at Écolys. It’s bad luck’s fault.
On the side of the Walloon Water Company (SWDE), which manages the network, we deplore a major leak which seriously disrupts distribution, in the Ecolys park but also in homes in Suarlée and Rhisnes (La Bruyère).
Opposite the brasserie, the reception of the Ibis hotel welcomes customers who have reserved a room to explain the situation to them and immediately dispatch them to other establishments of the Accor brand, a French multinational hotel industry.
For Paul de Sauvage, who manages the business centre, canceling all room reservations was the only thing to do. “We cannot take risks on a hypothetical return of water in the evening (one chance in two), and leave our customers without the possibility of taking a shower. It would be catastrophic in terms of image”he said Monday, around 4 p.m.
“Fortunately, explains Céline, the manager, we can relocate all our clients to the center of Namur (at the Hotel Ibis Namur Center Gare). We are lucky.” This is the strength of a chain such as Accor. “In the event of difficulty in a hotel of the brand, the others mobilize and play full solidarity. Confused customers enjoy a privileged welcome to compensate for the inconvenience”further details the hotel administrator, Paul de Sauvage, who speaks of delicate consequences to manage.
The leak still not found
But it’s not just the hotel and the brasserie. Below, the Italian restaurant La Tavola had to manage this complication, but without having to close.
On the other hand, we have not been able to get in touch with the Carrément Bon bakery, which has opened its factory within Ecolys.
The Namur headquarters of the multinational Mondelez (ex-Kraft food) was just as absent.
According to our information, these water-intensive agri-food companies simply had to temporarily close their doors until further notice.
When the water no longer flows from the taps of a few individual houses, families can still fall back on water bottles, or even on rainwater tanks. But on the scale of an economic park, the impact is considerable.
Finding this leak is anything but simple for the SWDE teams. In Suarlée, Écolys and its surroundings are supplied by a water tower connected to a water catchment located in Rhisnes. The space is vast. The men, a team of 12, work in large numbers to probe the ground and detect it, in particular by sound. They were hard at work all night and Monday, to no avail.
Monday evening, at the time of closing this edition, the leak had still not been located. The search resumes on Tuesday morning. They might be interrupted thanks to an alternative solution which restored the water, following a reorganization of the sources of supply. “The water therefore returned to the hotel and restaurant, but in degraded mode”explains SWDE spokesperson, Benoît Moulin, ie without offering the same pressure and the same flow as usual.
Anyone who showed up at the hotel reception following 7:30 p.m. was able to stay there as if nothing had happened.
Presumably, the situation should return to normal on Tuesday. Monday evening, the Brasserie Le Félicien, closed to individuals, was able to serve dinner for the 170 technicians busy with the big dismantling of the festival, in dishes recovered from right and left.
Luckily, given the long duration of the blackout, the toilets in the Business Village Écolysa model of resource sustainability, are supplied with rainwater. “But you can’t do the dishes or the coffee with rainwater”we remember on the side of the brewery.
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