Hundreds of dead fish have been floating in the Tongelreepbeek near Valkenswaard since Thursday, forester Erik Schram reports to Omroep Brabant. He talks about a minor environmental disaster. According to Water Board De Dommel, excess sewage from Belgium is the culprit.
“This is such a shame,” Schram laments. He can hardly believe it. The dead fish are currently drifting towards Eindhoven.
“This is normally a beautiful stream in the Leenderbos nature reserve, which continues towards the Valkerhorst nature reserve and then ends in Eindhoven. It is full of aquatic plants and fish. They are probably all broken now. It is really a small environmental disaster.”
Death by Belgian sewage water
Schram did not find the fish himself. “One of the Staatsbosbeheer volunteers was walking around the area. He looked into the stream and suddenly saw that the water was completely cloudy. Then he saw all those fish floating,” says Schram.
As a forester, Schram finds it difficult to say what this means for the stream in the long term. But the cause is now clear: the fish have died because of the sewage in Belgium.
Belgium has been struggling with heavy rainfall lately. The sewer could not handle that water and drained the water. This is done through a so-called overflow. An overflow drains sewage to the surface water.
overflow
In this case, this happened at an overflow in the Warmbeek stream landscape, in Belgian Limburg. As an emergency stop, that excess water is piloted into the Tongelreepbeek, with all its consequences, a spokesperson for De Dommel Water Board said.
Erik de Ridder, water dignitary at the Water Board, agrees.
“These are very nasty images. It is a well-known critical place in the system. We have been in contact with our Belgian colleagues,” he writes in a response. “Water board, but certainly also municipalities, must and are working on this”, he concludes.
Tongelreepbeek
The Tongelreep is a tributary of the Dommel. It rises in Belgium at Neerpelt and comes through Valkenswaard and Aalst in Eindhoven at the Dommel.