Canals draining, collecting and moving water around are everywhere – 18 percent of the nation today is considered water.
The Netherlands’ landscape and economy is built on 1,100 years of water engineering. That’s not a typo.īy comparison, New Orleans’ upgraded system of protective levees and surge barriers is supposed to guard against storm events likely to happen every 500 years. – protection against an event with a probability of occurring once every 10,000 years. Today, a national system of dikes and surge barriers provide a level of protection unheard of in the U.S. 1, 1953, a strong storm surge breached dikes in southwestern Netherlands, causing extensive flooding. After a devastating North Sea flood in the 1953 resulted in 1,800 deaths, the nation adopted a “never again” attitude. The Netherlands doesn’t fool around with floods. Like the Dutch, we also know we can do more to improve the resiliency of coastal habitats that provide important ecosystem services: risk reduction, shell fish and fisheries production, water quality improvement, recreation. Katrina and Sandy showed we must do betterĪfter seeing the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago, and more recently by Super Storm Sandy, we know we can do a better job reducing risks to people and the economy.
#VIOLET STORM NETHERLANDS HOW TO#
We can learn from the Dutch experience and expertise how to live well with water. Water management is in the DNA of the Netherlands. What’s more, the Netherlands is second only to the United States in agricultural exports. One-half of the Netherlands is flood-prone and about one-quarter is below sea level. And yet, more than 16 million people live well in an area the size of Connecticut, and with a per capita Gross Domestic Product similar to that of the United States. I was looking for lessons to take back to our work on natural infrastructure and the restoration of the vanishing Mississippi River Delta. I then spent the next 10 days in the Netherlands, meeting with water districts, academic institutions, research foundations and staff at the Rijkswaterstaat – the Netherlands equivalent of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. I had already learned something before my plane touched ground. Dunes provide flood protection for 50 percent of the Dutch coast – including one of the busiest ports in the world. Second, the deep fields of undeveloped dunes protecting the coastline. Two things struck me immediately: First, the sheer number of container vessels approaching and leaving the Port of Rotterdam. I looked out the window at the North Sea as my flight began its descent toward Amsterdam.
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