Rue Henri-Puype was silent, its shutters closed. Residents have taken refuge with their families or in rental cottages covered by their insurance. It's not the cold and snow, which fell in abundance on January 17, that have kept residents away from this neighborhood of Arques (northern France), but rather the water from the Basse-Meldyck river, which has overflowed three times since early November 2023. Houses are devastated, suffering from pervasive dampness. Despite residents having cleared away the mud left by the backwash, they are uninhabitable.

It's all too much for Stéphane, an automation technician at glassmaker Arc International, who in mid-January was busy chipping away at the drywall on his first floor. He's lost count of the time he's spent making his house more attractive and comfortable. "We can't live here anymore. Even if they clean up, if they raise the dikes, the water will always be stronger," said the 60-year-old man, who now wants to be expropriated because "there's no other solution."

He's heard about the mayor's plan to rebuild a new neighborhood here. "Most of the residents on this street don't even want to go back into their houses anymore. That's where they are. They're done," said Benoît Roussel, the mayor (Socialist). The young official is trying to think of what's next for the residents of Rue Henri-Puype, the most at-risk street in his town.

"They need to be able to recoup what they paid for the acquisition of their homes but also for the work. For the people who live here, their house is their only asset," said Roussel. He imagines "replacing the houses on this flood-prone street with raised apartments or with garages on the first floor," but the town of 9,900 inhabitants doesn't have the means to acquire all the houses to launch a real estate operation on this scale.

'There are places where there should be no more housing'

He did hear Christophe Béchu, the environment minister, declare on January 4 that "looking reality in the face means saying that there are places where there should be no more housing," but he's betting on a different way of building. And to finance this project, "by combining what the residents will receive from insurance and state intervention, we should be able to raze and rebuild in a different way."

Bertrand Petit, the local MP (Socialist), said that the question of expropriation by the state and compensation for owners living in the areas most exposed to flooding was raised during the visit of the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, on January 9. "He didn't close the door, but we'll have to look at it on a case-by-case basis to draw all the consequences of these repeated floods."

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