Flooding of the Meuse River

Many cities and towns in the countries of Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, and Luxembourg were hit hard and suffered millions of euros in damages. The increase in climate change, global warming caused by human emissions and greenhouse gases, has made these types of events occur more often lately all around the world and it has become more and more noticeable. As the world has been feeling a higher global temperature since the 20th century, that increases the amount of precipitation (Denchak) which is highlighted by the darker colors around Maastricht in the map above.

The flood in the small town of Valkenburg was one of the hardest hit locations in the Netherlands as over 700 families were displaced and the flooding damage downtown is estimated at nearly 400 million euro. Valkenburg is located at the bottom of a valley and therefore is a very prime location for intense flooding.

The Meuse River flows through the Netherlands down to Belgium and eventually to France as well. Many stream runoffs from the river caused towns that are not directly located on the river to be severely damaged as well. A lot of these stream runoffs can be indicated by the yellow and red marks on the map where the risk of floods increase in the Netherlands.

The Meuse River flooded over numerous times in our history and Belgium and the Netherlands have been widening and deepening the river since 1840. The Netherlands started a project called the "Room for River Project" in 2006 attempting to prevent these types of floods. The budget for this plan was over 2 billion euros. (Sharma) The country plans to use these fund to remove sediment built up in the river, relocating dykes to further away from river, and constructing green channels to serve as a flood bypass.

In Germany, the Rhine River overflowed as well because of the intense amount of precipitation. More than 200 deaths from the flooding came from this region of Europe as well. "I saw the pizza store getting flooded, half an hour later the bakery was flooded. There is a camping ground up there, so caravans and campervans came floating past, gas tanks. We were powerless against it. It came so fast, I've never seen anything like it." (Rattay) This quote is from a man in in the town of Schuld in Germany and describes exactly how so many people died because of the speed the flooding came through the villages.

Works Cited

Denchak, Melissa. “Flooding and Climate Change: Everything You Need to Know.” NRDC, 4 Nov. 2020.

Rasmus, Benjamin. “Flood Risks in the South of the Netherlands.” ArcGis, 12 Sept. 2021.

Rattay, Wolfgang \. “At Least 44 Dead, Dozens Missing as Floods Sweep through Western Europe.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 16 July 2021.

Sharma, Priyanka. “Holland Times.” Holland Times -, 6 Sept. 2021.