Here's an even more shocking fact: three out of 10 households in Flanders are not connected to a waste water treatment facility and dump their sewage straight into the rivers. Nitrates from manure also get washed into the water system whenever it rains.

It doesn't help that Flanders is an incredibly flat region that floods easily. Nor that it's densely populated with many farms (there are more pigs than people). Also, many residents live in isolated areas where special pipelines need to be built to link them to waste water treatment plants.

Adding to the geographical challenges, are technical problems. Waste water treatment plants in Flanders currently take in a lot of rain water, which does not require the same treatment as sewage. These processes need to be separated into two facilities to keep the overall cost of the plants down.

Then there are the political obstacles. It was not until the late 1980s that the competence for water was passed from the federal government to the regions. Both levels now blame the other for the lack of progress, but it's fair to say the Flemish region was starting at this late date from scratch.

Show me the money

It also had to deal with the delicate issue of funding. When the competence was given to the region, Belgium had bid to join the euro and was having a tough time meeting economic criteria, given its mounting national debt. All government bodies had to tighten their belts.

Today, funding is no easier to come by, especially with the financial crisis eating into everyone's budget. And imposing costly regulations on businesses and households that are already feeling the pinch is hardly going to boost the government in the popularity stakes.

"The authorities should stop people from building houses by the major river beds, and there should be drastic action taken against farming," says David Aubin, a professor of political science at the Catholic University of Leuven. "But it's difficult politically."

In its inauguration declaration, the new regional government, which took office in June, pledged to bring in a long-term investment plan for an integrated water policy that would see most Flemish waters meeting "good" ecological standards by 2020.

The Flemish government acknowledged that it needed to do more on legislation for waterways and polders (low-lying land reclaimed from rivers or the sea) and promised it would exploit local knowledge and ensure the participation of local actors to pave the way for an integrated policy.

"We will strive towards a maximum connectivity for household sewage," reads the declaration. "Where this is not possible, we will make a strong policy for individual water purification. The separation of rain water and waste water circuits would also improve the water quality."

While environmentalists have welcomed the declaration after years of stagnation of the region's water policy, they suspect the new government will come up against the same obstacles when it comes to enforcement.

"What absolutely needs to be done is for the Flemish authorities to force the municipalities [local governments] to apply the legislation. But the problem is that if they don't do it, nothing happens to them," said Jan Turf, water policy expert from Bond Beter Leefmilieu Vlaanderen (Federation for a Better Environment).

Turf says he expected the financial crisis would delay plans to modernise the plants. "They acknowledge that the situation is bad, but nothing has happened yet. The government is looking to cut the budget, and all of the easy investments have already been made."

Environmental lawyer Wim Vandenberghe from DLA Piper agrees. "One of the biggest issues is nitrates in the ground water. There is always talk of reducing the number of permits granted to pig farms but it never really happens. The local communes want the farmers to stay and be happy."

Latest data on nitrate levels from the environmental agency Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij (VMM) show a marginal improvement for the region as a whole. In 2007-2008, only 37% of samples from rivers exceeded the norm compared to 42% in the previous period. But in West Flanders, where the concentration of farms is high, this figure was more like 60%.

Flanders under pressure

Belgium as a whole has been under immense pressure to improve its record, especially given the onslaught of European Union water legislation. The Flemish government has already acknowledged that it will not meet the latest standards required by the waste water directive on time.

It is also, according to Turf, unlikely to meet tighter bathing water standards that take effect in 2015, even if its coastal waters are meeting the standards today. "This is nothing to be proud of," he says. "The standards are not that high."

Given that waste water gets into the rivers, it inevitably ends up in coastal waters. "Our infrastructure cannot take it, and so it goes into the sea untreated. We always have background pollution in the North Sea," says Mie Van den Kerckhove of VMM.

Flanders' 67-kilometre coastline faces particular problems. "It's very actively used," explains Van den Kerckhove. "There are apartments over almost the whole line and not much nature. The rivers bring a lot of pollution out to sea, especially on rainy days."

She argues, however, that Flanders has the strictest checks in Europe on its bathing waters and publishes information on which waters are safe on a regular basis.

Turf retorts that monitoring "doesn't change the quality of the water".

"I remember when water quality was so bad that people would not live by rivers," he continues. "There have been improvements, but these stopped in the early 2000s. But we have to put more money into water management. It's a question of biodiversity. This is where fish swim and people want to jump in."

www.bondbeterleefmilieu.be

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