Six months following the floods that hit Wallonia in mid-July 2021, there is still an emergency, notes the Walloon Minister of the Economy and Regional Planning Willy Borsus, when asked regarding La Première: “Even though 3,100 housing units have been made available to the disaster victims, a certain number of cases must be settled in order to allow people to both rebuild and to rebuild themselves. A lot of people are still in transitory situations, insurance must be settled, choices in terms of infrastructure must be made. The Walloon Region has decided to intervene in addition to the capped amounts provided for in insurance contracts, this regional solidarity will be able to support the resumption of a large number of ‘activities, but also, behind these activities, the jobs concerned. Several thousand jobs are affected by the effective resumption of commercial or business activities “.
►►►Find our special file: floods in Belgium, 6 months later
Regarding reconstruction, Minister Borsus “does not want to add suffering to suffering and force, uproot, constrain. I hope that we can be part of dialogue and partnership, also with local authorities. But we must take into account the lessons of this that happened in the basins concerned, but it might happen in other situations in Wallonia. to have temporary water retention zones so as to avoid this very rapid temporary increase in the water level. We must build differently: protect the structures of the buildings, choose the materials. At the same time we are part of the plans strategic, in particular for the Vesdre, in order to fix the lines of the future. A circular is sent this Thursday to the municipalities in order to update the rules of conduct, whether it is for the authors of project, the candidates for construction, the civil servants. The delegates or the towns and municipalities, with a hierarchy regarding the measures to be taken as well as the bans, depending on whether the risk of flooding is low, medium or high. If the risk is low, we must demonstrate that the situation is not worsening and measure what needs to be changed on the urbanizable area. If the risk is medium, it is also necessary to demonstrate that the building would withstand any flooding hypothesis such as has been encountered elsewhere. And if we are in a high hazard zone, it is almost impossible to build in the future, except by doing an extremely in-depth hydrological study. One of our main missions is to protect people and to anticipate through general measures and the analysis of specific cases “.
“We are tightening the rules in order to protect people. In the longer term we are moving towards ‘zero concrete net ‘in 2050 and we are setting a global trajectory to avoid over-urbanizing our territory and to preserve natural spaces, allow biodiversity to develop, reconvert industrial sites “, he insists.
