Netherlands Sets Model of Flood Prevention

Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

The Netherlands has invested heavily in flood control projects like the Maeslantkering.

LELYSTAD, the Netherlands ? Entrusted with ensuring that the central Netherlands never suffers a calamity like the one visited on New York by Hurricane Sandy, Willem van Dijk, guardian of the dikes in Flevoland, a Dutch province that is more than 12 feet below sea level, sends out 11 men each morning to combat a grave menace to the world?s most advanced network of storm defenses.

Their mission is to kill muskrats. Using metal cages and spring traps baited with carrots, Flevoland?s rodent hunters provide a low-tech but vital service in an elaborate and highly effective Dutch defensive system that includes flood-control techniques first developed in the Middle Ages and futuristic steel structures that, operated by computers, move to block storm surges when water levels rise too high.

In recent days, the Netherlands? peerless expertise and centuries of experience in battling water have been widely hailed in the United States as offering lessons for how New York and other cities might better protect people and property from flooding. Dutch engineering companies are already pitching projects to fortify Manhattan against storms, stressing that the Netherlands has experience with a coastline and cluster of river estuaries that resemble New York?s, and pose similar flooding risks.

But Dutch officials and hydrology experts who have examined the contrasting systems of the two countries say that replicating Dutch successes in the United States would require a radical reshaping of the American approach to vulnerable coastal areas and disaster prevention.

The Dutch ?way of thinking is completely different from the U.S.,? where disaster relief generally takes precedence over disaster avoidance, said Wim Kuijken, the Dutch government?s senior official for overall water control policy. ?The U.S. is excellent at disaster management,? but ?working to avoid disaster is completely different from working after a disaster.?

The Netherlands does not have hurricanes but does have ferocious storms that hurtle in from the northwest, funneled toward the Dutch coast across the North Sea. Centuries of living so close to the edge have cultivated a keen awareness of the consequences of flooding and the imperative to prevent them in a country where two-thirds of the population, including most residents of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, live on flood-prone land, much of it below sea level.

?We know that if things go wrong, we pay for decades,? said Mr. Kuijken, who holds the post of delta commissioner. As a result, he said, the Netherlands has been able to mobilize enormous resources to anticipate and minimize the risk of flooding.

For most of their history, the Dutch held back water in land that began as a large peat swamp by creating an elaborate mosaic of dikes, which, strung together today, would stretch for nearly 50,000 miles. After serious floods in 1916 and 1953, however, it was decided that constantly building, raising and reinforcing dikes was no longer feasible, particularly in densely populated areas.

This led to a series of huge dam projects to seal off flood-prone river estuaries and inlets from the sea, which shortened the coastline and sharply reduced the land area exposed to storm surges. On waterways that could not be sealed because of heavy shipping traffic, like the estuary leading to Rotterdam?s port, movable barriers were erected instead.

In response to the 1953 floods, which killed more than 1,800 people, the state laid down strict rules, ordering that flood defenses be made strong enough to resist a storm so severe that, according to computer projections, it would occur only once every 10,000 years.

If a dike breaks in Flevoland, an area nearly three times the size of Manhattan and made up entirely of land reclaimed from the sea, it would take just 48 hours for the entire province to be submerged in water, Mr. Van Dijk said. He is responsible for dike maintenance in the province, which includes killing the muskrats that weaken the levees by burrowing deep into them to create nesting chambers.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2012

An article on Thursday about the lessons in flood protection that the Netherlands could offer to the United States misidentified a Dutch company involved in flood risk reduction that employs Mathijs van Ledden, who commented on flood-related challenges facing the United States. The company is Royal HaskoningDHV ? not Arcadis, a Dutch engineering consulting company.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/world/europe/netherlands-sets-model-of-flood-prevention.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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