Flanders Water Extraction Ban Monitor (Captatieverbod)

Get the current Flemish surface-water extraction ban status for every monitored waterway/zone — allowed or forbidden, permanent or drought-related, with validity dates — sourced directly from the Flemish Environment Agency's (VMM) official open-data service.

When should an AI agent use this?

• "Is water extraction currently forbidden from this waterway in the Antwerpen province?"
• "Which zones in Vlaams-Brabant currently have an active extraction ban?"
• "Give me all Flemish extraction zones with a permanent (year-round) ban."
• "How many extraction zones province-wide are currently restricted vs. allowed?"
• "Since when has this specific zone's extraction ban been active?"

What this Actor does

• Fetches every extraction zone from VMM's official ArcGIS open-data service (no scraping, no authentication needed).
• Returns each zone's current status (forbidden/allowed/unknown), whether the ban is permanent (year-round, ecologically vulnerable waterway) or temporary (drought-related), and its validity dates.
• Supports filtering by province and by a free-text search term on the zone/waterway name.
• Automatically paginates the underlying service so the full dataset (~900 zones) is always covered, even if the province adds more zones in the future.

Input

Field	Type	Description
provincies	string[]	Filter by province name (e.g. "Antwerpen") or code (e.g. "ANT"), case-insensitive. Default: all 5 provinces.
onlyVerboden	boolean	Only return zones currently under an extraction ban. Default false.
zoekterm	string	Only return zones whose name/sub-basin contains this text (case-insensitive).
maxResults	integer	Maximum number of records to return (1-2000). Default 1000.

Output

One flat JSON record per extraction zone:

{
  "land": "BE",
  "regio": "Antwerpen",
  "provincieCode": "ANT",
  "zone": "KANAAL DESSEL-SCHOTEN",
  "code": "ANT-4",
  "bekken": 10,
  "deelbekken": "10-06",
  "onttrekkingsverbodStatus": "volledig",
  "adviesTekst": "Geen advies",
  "permanentVerbod": false,
  "verbodStartDatum": "2026-07-16T22:00:00.000Z",
  "verbodEindDatum": null,
  "bronDatum": "2026-07-18T18:28:12.000Z",
  "bronUrl": "https://inspirepub.waterinfo.be/arcgis/...",
  "datumOpgehaald": "2026-07-19T08:00:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• Agricultural/irrigation planning for farms drawing water from Flemish waterways.
• Advisory/legal support for clients holding a water extraction permit.
• Insurance/reinsurance risk screening for Belgian agricultural portfolios.
• Feeding a scheduled monitoring pipeline that alerts when a specific zone's ban status changes.

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify's Pay-Per-Event (PPE) pricing model.

• Actor Start: $0.00005 (Apify default)
• zone-record: $0.004 per delivered zone record
• captatieverbod-signaal: $0.015 per zone record currently under an active extraction ban

Legal

Data sourced exclusively from the Flemish Environment Agency's (VMM) official public open-data service (inspirepub.waterinfo.be). No personal data is processed. This Actor reports the latest officially published extraction ban status; it does not provide legal advice or predict future bans.

FAQ

Q: Does this cover Wallonia or Brussels? A: No — Flanders (Vlaanderen) is the only Belgian region with a comparable structured, machine-readable status source. Wallonia handles extraction restrictions via ad-hoc provincial governor decrees (PDF/press releases) without a central API, and Brussels has essentially no local extraction restrictions.

Q: What does "permanent" mean? A: A permanent ban applies year-round to ecologically vulnerable waterways, independent of the current drought situation. A non-permanent (temporary) ban is drought-related and has a start date (and sometimes an end date).

Q: How current is this data? A: The source service is updated by VMM as decisions change; each record includes the underlying edit timestamp (bronDatum).

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Zoekwoorden: captatieverbod Vlaanderen, onttrekkingsverbod, wateronttrekking verboden, VMM, droogte Vlaanderen, waterloop onttrekking.

Keywords

belgium, flanders, drought, water-extraction, captatieverbod, vmm, agriculture-risk, insurance-risk, climate-risk, open-data, water-scarcity

Changelog

0.1.0

• Initial release: extraction ban status per zone/waterway for all Flemish provinces, from the VMM ArcGIS open-data service.