For a moment the city of Antwerp seemed to be heading for a disaster in the night from Wednesday to Thursday. Due to a flat fuel tank, a cargo ship lost more than 10,000 liters of oil on the Albert Canal the night before, at the location of Olen. An oil slick spread over the water for a few kilometers.
“We do everything so that the oil does not get to Antwerp, because otherwise that would be a huge disaster,” said the mayor Van Olen, Kris Gebruers, on Thursday morning The latest news. About forty kilometers from the cargo ship, the Antwerp drinking water company Waterlink extracts its drinking water on the Albert Canal.
In the end, a specialized company managed to clean up almost all diesel in the course of Thursday. That happened with small boats and floating ‘sausages’. “There are five zones where the oil has been put in, there we are sucking the slurry away,” an employee of the company told the VRT.
The Olen lock, which was closed.
Photo Jonas Roosens/Belga
At 2 p.m. the municipality announced that almost all clean -up work has been completed. With that, shipping, which had been stopping since Wednesday, could be resumed again. Opposite The standard The Flemish Millieumaatschappij stated that the damage to the environment is limited: “the oil floats and is relatively easy to suck up”.
The pollution that has been left in the canal is limited and may simply evaporate, the Flemish Waterweg reports Het Nieuwsblad. The inland shipping organization states that the drinking water supply of Antwerp was never in danger: “water extraction for drinking water is done much closer to Antwerp”.