Since I last posted here, I've been a little fixated with that...

Since I last posted here, I've been a little fixated with that 'Major Belgian Project' that was mentioned in the announcement of 23/08/19 ('Half Yearly Report').

The reason I find this intriguing is because Belgium isn't a particularly large country, nor does it really have many large lakes. So the list of large Belgian water bodies that would be in contention for a phoslock treatment couldn't be a particularly long one.

Increasingly, I've been wondering if the major Belgian project mentioned in the announcement may have something to do with the River Meuse (or 'Maas' in Dutch).

The River Meuse rises in France, and meanders across two other European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands, before draining into the North Sea. The map below, depicting the course of the River Meuse, is taken from the website of an organisation called 'Drinkable Rivers'.


A Dutch environmentalist called Li An Phoa, the founder of Drinkable Rivers, organised a 1061 kilometre walk along the River Meuse last year, collecting data from the river each day. As noted on the Drinkable Rivers website, this represented the first step in the campaign for a drinkable Meuse:

The citizen science along the river Meuse is a small step towards the large dream of initiator Li An Phoa: a world with drinkable rivers. "During my river walks I do research and mobilise local people to care for their river.” Politicians adopt her vision as well. “Li An Phoa’s vision towards a drinkable Meuse has sparkled a very new approach to our river, leading us to take concrete measures to make it possible and safe to swim in the river Meuse by 2020,” says Boris Ravignon, mayor of Charleville-Mézières, and president of EPAMA, the French Public Entity for the Management of the River Meuse. Together with Ravignon, Li An Phoa works on a network of mayors for a drinkable Meuse.

As with many European rivers, the River Meuse is too polluted to swim, with E-coli contamination being a particular problem. The French mayor quoted in the extract above seemed to think the goal of a swimmable Meuse would be achievable by 2020, although some locals remain sceptical, as reported by this French news site last month.

One news item earlier this year from the Netherlands, titled Rivers as lifelines, mentioned that Li An Phoa also intends to initiate a similar campaign along China's River Yangtze:

The drinkability of water is also the focus of the Dutch NGO Drinkable Rivers. Founder Li An Phoa organized a ‘water walk’ along the Meuse last year, from its origins in France to the delta in the Netherlands. Joined by many people living along the river, she gathered samples to check the water for chemical pollutants. The aim is not just to map the water quality, but also to raise awareness and involve people in taking care of their rivers. Li An aims to organize more walks in the future, hoping to also visit the Yangtze in the future for a similar project. Her data from her walks is already being included in water databases, including the Chinese database MyH2O.

The same article then goes on to point out an interesting connections between the Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources:

Of course, the Netherlands is well known for her water expertise. Also in China there is much cooperation in the field of water management. Not only in the area of resilience but also in the field of water quality. Rijkswaterstaat (under the responsibility of the Dutch Ministry of Infastructure and Environment) and the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources have already worked together for over a decade. Chinese ‘River Commissions’, who are responsible for day to day water management, are also involved in this cooperation to decrease public health risks. The cooperation in the Yangtze River area for instance includes managing early warning systems to safeguard the water quality in the river. Meanwhile, in lake Tai there is a focus on monitoring the presence blue-green algae, which can make people very sick when they drink it, using Dutch innovations.

The suggestion that the Rijkswaterstaat and the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources work closely together is intriguing, partiucalrly when you bear in mind that earlier this year the company announced that the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources had officially recognised phoslock as an advanced tool for phosphorus removal.('Phoslock secures major Chinese accreditation', 03/06/19).

This China/Dutch connection also might explain why a prominent Dutch algae expert, Miquel Lurling, seems to have a major role with the company.

In summary, I think there is a good chance that the push to rehabilitate the River Meuse might be the major Belgian project that was alluded to in the announcement last month.

If the authorities in France, Belgium and the Netherlands decide to give the green light to the Meuse rehabilitation project, there is a good chance this could involve phoslcok treatments, and if so, it would represent a sizeable project indeed for this company. All things considered, it would seem that Europe, as well as the United States and China, could be a source of very large projects for this company in the near future.