The inhabitants of the village of Enines, in Orp-Jauche, Walloon Brabant, are fed up. Local residents have found themselves with water three times in one week, according to information from RTBF.
Repeated leaks in the village’s water distribution system have frustrated the supply of drinking water for several days. Local mayor, Hugues Ghenne, has now filed a complaint before the Walloon Water Company (SWDE).
“We wrote directly to the company, and if it continues, we will go to court. This is no longer possible. The daily logistics in terms of information, follow-up, it’s not good. I won’t even mention what happens after, when we have to fill in all the holes made in the road. Sometimes, it’s like a circus,” he complained.
Besides the persistent leaks and outages, the mayor complains of poor communication on the part of the SWDE.
“We know that the SWDE is working, it has big investment plans and we are aware that it cannot do everything at the same time across Wallonia. We regret this, because we would like to have all the pipes replaced, that would save us from having problems. But the most important element to enable us to do our job well is communication,” Ghenne noted.
With better communication from the water company, the mayor says that he is able to inform local partners who can communicate outages to local communities. “There have always been breakages or leaks, that’s not a problem, we manage them together. But when there’s a lack of communication, it’s atrocious,” he said.
Ghenne has contacted the governor of Walloon Brabant, Gilles Mahieu, to organise a consultation meeting with the SWDE to air the local administration’s grievances.
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Contacted by RTBF, the SWDE wanted to avoid escalating the dispute. “The repairs were carried out as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson simply said. SWDE notes that work is in progress to transport extra volumes of water to the affected village to ensure normal supply in the event of new leaks.
Elsewhere in Wallonia, the SWDE has struggled to maintain the supply of fresh drinking water. Samples of tap water taken in Hodeige, near Liège, have revealed abnormally high levels of coli bacteria, found in human faeces, rendering water “non-drinkable.”
On Thursday, water was determined to be non-drinkable for a second day in a row, while water was being chlorinated. The SWDE suspects that sewage may have entered the system from a local treatment plant in the town of Oreye due to two faulty anti-backflow valves.
