1 October 2025, Ghent
We look back fondly on the first live meeting for a drinkable Scheldt and how a wonderful group of 50 mayors, aldermen/councillors, scientists, residents and other stakeholders came together around a common goal: to make the Scheldt drinkable again.
We discussed the Our Scheldt River intention, through which we as a community commit ourselves to making our river drinkable. A wonderful, open discussion ensued, in which different visions, questions and doubts were addressed.
During the meeting, the first administrators signed the Our Scheldt River Intention: the City of Ghent with councillor Filip Watteeuw and Terneuzen with councillor Laszlo van de Voorde.
We will retain the intention for administrators in its current form as a joint basis, whereby organisations, companies and municipalities themselves are given the space to further shape and implement this internally in a way that suits their own constituencies, inspired by the valuable contributions and suggestions already made on 1 October.
We deliberately leave any revisions to the participants themselves, so that they can discuss within their own organisation or community what this declaration of intent means for them in concrete terms.
Based on the input on 1 October, we have also drawn up a river intention for organisations, communities and residents.
We are grateful that Ghent was able to host this event. We would like to thank all participants, including those from the Scheldt, for coming and for their active contribution.
Thank you to the speakers – Alderman Filip Watteeuw, Councillor Laszlo van de Voorde, Mayor Koen van den Heuvel and Professor Patrick Meire – and to the chair of the day, Leon Dhaene.
It was wonderful to see how much enthusiasm, ideas and commitment there is for this special, cross-border initiative.
Drinkable RiversTM CC 
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