More than one and a half months after the floods in Wallonia, there is still a 10 kilometre-long line of waste dumped on an unused motorway in the Liège province.
On the A601, a motorway near the municipality of Juprelle in Liège that has not been in use since 2014, dozens of trucks and lorries dumped waste that had been collected after the floods.
In total, about 90,000 tons of waste were dumped along a 10-kilometre stretch of road, and it is still there a month and a half later, bothering many local residents.
"When you sit on your terrace in the evening, you can immediately smell the stench," local resident Slavko Czymbalak told RTBF.
However, the inhabitants of Juprelle cannot count on the smell disappearing soon, as the clean-up work is expected to take until June next year.
During the works, lorries collect the waste and transport it to various processing centres in Flanders and Wallonia.
According to calculations by Walloon Minister of the Environment Céline Tellier, some 50% to 60% of the waste can be recycled, a big chunk more than the original estimate of 20% to 30%.
Christine Servaes, the mayor of Juprelle, said that "if it gets really hot next summer, the waste could cause a major nuisance," advocating for clearing the motorway as soon as possible.
The Brussels Times
