Start memorandum on the underground pipeline street of Antwerp port has been postponed again: “This lack of clarity is not a matter of unrest, but of injustice” (Zandhoven)
Once again, the plans for an underground pipeline route between the port of Antwerp and the German Ruhr area are being pushed forward. And that two years ago it was said that they would be built in 2023-2024. At the end of 2020, the Flemish government approved the initial memorandum for the preparation of a Regional Spatial Implementation Plan (GRUP) with a view to the construction of a pipeline street, a 45-metre-wide zone in which pipelines for the chemical sector are bundled, more for the transport of propane gas. .
4,500 individual issues. In February this year, the Flemish Minister for the Environment Zuhal Demir (N-VA) decided to thoroughly adjust the routes and the minister promised to come up with a new proposal after the spring break.
An answer from Demir (N-VA) to a question from Flemish Member of Parliament Hannes Anaf (Vooruit) shows that the project would now be discussed again in the Council of Ministers ten earliest next spring. “We get the impression that the government wants this dossier on the 2024 elections to avoid a new Ventilus story,” Anaf thinks.
The three rounds have an impact on about 45 municipalities. T houses with expropriation, expansive are both centrally located in Zandhoven. The Municipal Executive of Zandhoven therefore issued an unfavorable advice in 2021. Because there are quite a lot of houses next to the E313 motorway in the districts of Viersel and Massenhoven, the impact here is so great.
Marc De Kinder (57) and his son Seppe (22) have been living in a social rental home of De Zonnige Kempen in the Watersportlaan in Viersel since January of this year. The completely new social housing estate was only opened in November 2014.
Until now I rented privately in Zandhoven and I loved living there. But I had already refused social housing twice and didn’t dare a third time,” says Marc, who is disabled. “So I canceled my rent. A week after I had moved in here, a neighbor asked if I knew it would be expropriated here. How so? I immediately called the Sunny Kempen. There they answered me that they also did not know whether it would go ahead or not. It’s expert. I only painted my living room and kitchen, why should I continue? I should have filled a lot of holes in the wall from the previous tenant, but I stopped. I can’t put any money into anything if I might have to get out of here anyway. It’s no fun not knowing anything. If I have to leave, the Zonnige Kempen has to provide a rental house again where I can go with my dog and children.”
gardener’s house
The idyllic gardener’s house in Schoten, where Nancy Hermans runs her famous ice cream shop Mama Calinka, falls in two of the three existing routes. Here too, the municipality gave negative advice. When it comes to controlling existing homes. This can be done by bundling the reed pipes with the existing pipes 150 meters away, for which a wide strip has already been deforested. Because that’s the funny thing: just like in Viersel, there is already an underground pipeline street in Schoten just 150 meters away. “But when we ask why they can’t be bundled, we don’t get an answer,” says Nancy Hermans. “You have to treat and communicate with people in a dignified way. After we finally got a meeting with someone from the department insisting. Other neighbors were also present. We didn’t get any answers why that pipeline street can make right angles, but makes a special bend here to walk through our gate. come and have a look, I asked. That was impossible. “Madam, I understand your concern, but you have to frame that in the scale of our project,” it sounds.
Now in the fall many people come to eat a pancake or waffle at Mama Calinka. “Every day, customers ask me if we already know whether we can stay. If you do a preliminary study around three routes, you involve so many people. Our neighbors just built a new house. It is best to accept that the pipeline has an added value, but the explanation is revengeful. It frustrates that you are not taken seriously as a person. It has nothing to do with problems, it has to do with injustice. Bullying people. Bring clarity.”