When heavy rain falls on Sandra Busselot’s steep street in Mechelen, northern , torrents of water rush toward her front door. Twice in recent years, the water has risen to the threshold — once stopping just short of flooding her home.
“Once the water is in your house, it’s too late. You can never sell your house at a good price again,” Busselot said.
The can’t cope with increasingly intense , leaving streets like Busselot’s prone to flooding.
It’s a problem people across the Flanders region face. The country’s most densely populated and urbanized area, it has the highest degree of urban sprawl in Europe. Lots of sealed surfaces leave rainwater with nowhere to go, increasing flood risks.
A Mechelen resident for 20 years, Busselot has watched She and her husband no longer feel safe and are considering moving. “We like our home. But I’m not sure it’s smart to stay,” she told DW.
Alongside flooding, are becoming more common. When she first moved in, the rainwater tank in her garden would run dry only at the end of August. Now, it’s often empty by May — sometimes even April.
“We have a garden which is very dark and wet, but in the last couple of years it’s also very dry,” she said.
Giving rivers space in Flanders
This part of Flanders is known for its , marshes, temperate maritime climate and frequent rain. But the region now faces two extremes — drought and excess water. The River Scheldt and its tributaries remain vital arteries for the local economy, yet centuries of human engineering have altered their natural flow.
Generations of farmers expanded their fields by creating polders — land reclaimed from the water by building dikes to drain submerged areas for agriculture. These interventions have also contributed to today’s flooding problems.
“We had taken too much space from the river, we had to give some of the space back,” said Hans De Preter, head of infrastructure at Flemish Waterway, which manages rivers and canals in Flanders.
After a devastating flood in the 1970s, authorities launched the Sigma Plan, the region’s first comprehensive flood management strategy. It combined hard infrastructure like dikes and quays with controlled flood zones that act as buffers, protecting upstream areas from worst-case scenarios. Over time, the plan has been upgraded to address worsening climate change.
In the past 20 years, hundreds of kilometers of new and reinforced and quays have been built, including a restoration of the Scheldt quays in Antwerp, the river’s largest city and regional hub.
At the same time, some areas have undergone “depoldering” — removing inner dikes to give the river more room. Thousands of acres of farmland were expropriated to create flood zones and nature reserves, a move that initially faced fierce resistance.
People saw no benefits at first, and farmers were unhappy. Even with compensation, “they don’t like to lose land,” Dirk Gorrebeeck, a lifelong resident of the village of Kruibeke in Flanders, told DW.
From NIMBY to YIMBY in Mechelen
The Sigma Plan now draws visitors from around the world, who want to learn about its and how to apply them at home. Some delegations focus solely on public communication or managing opposition. “They are trying to learn what we are doing and how we are doing it,” said Stefaan Nollet, a project engineer with Flemish Waterway.
Gorrebeeck, who is a local tour guide, remembers the scheme’s early days. “In the beginning, everything was closed. We couldn’t walk there. The feeling of the area was very negative, and people were very much against it,” he said.
Officials say they used targeted outreach to win over residents. “If we did an overall information evening, only the people that are against would come and protest,” Nollet said.
Instead of large meetings, they approached groups individually, starting with nature organizations, and took time to talk to people. In the end, locals were swayed not just by discussion, but by being able to use the space for recreation, learning about its history and having beautiful, vibrant nature within reach.
“Even farmers accepted it over time — mostly because the compensation they received was reasonable, and especially because it was for the greater good,” Gorrebeeck said.
Similar projects are now underway on the outskirts of Mechelen, where local environment organization Natuurpunt is . Project coordinator Amelia Ilieva says the wetlands could hold the equivalent of 200 Olympic swimming pools, storing water during heavy rains and slowly releasing it in dry periods.
The city is also separating from sewage to prevent storm overflows and replacing paved areas with green spaces to let water soak into the soil.
But skepticism remains. Ilieva says some residents “don’t understand that we are trying to prevent floods by making nature more wet,” she said, adding that clear communication, visible results, and community involvement are key.
Some residents worry planned climate action ‘not enough’
Mechelen local, Sandra Busselot, supports the city’s anti-flood measures, but worries that actions like opening pavements and planting more greenery are merely “window dressing.”
In her two decades here, she’s watched large trees vanish from her neighborhood to make way for construction. “That’s kind of a double standard in the end,” Busselot said.
At the same time, she says, new developments cram tall buildings close together, trapping heat. “We see a lot of projects in the city where they build very tall buildings close to one another. And with those high walls, all the stays in the city,” she added.
For the most part, she thinks people don’t really worry about potential catastrophes like flooding until the water is at their doorstep. “I think people are worried when something happens. But then they forget, and the next day they’re busy with other things,” said Busselot.
But the region needs to use every tool at its disposal to prepare for disasters and work to prevent them, said Busselot, adding that the marshes “a very good response. But I think it’s not enough.”
Edited by: Anke Rasper
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