Man has always attempted to shape the environment to his comfort, and no place is this more
true than in the Netherlands. 17% of mainland Netherlands is artificial and constructed by the
Dutch themselves through a mixture of canals, levies, pumping systems, and a lot of dirt.
Most of this enlargement has been done in the past 100 years, but those windmill spinning,
tulip growing, wooden shoe wearing Dutch have been
installing nationwide expansion packs as far back as the 1300s.
How the hell did they do it? How did they manage to build an area
more than twice the size of Hong Kong and make it fit for human habitation?
But to ask the how we must first ask the “Why?” Why spend millions of euros building more land
when you can do what the rest of Europe did and simply steal some?
Ultimately, it comes down to the weather. Really. A low-lying coastal state with heavy rains is
prone to flooding, and not the kind where you have to put your wellies on to go to the shop. The
kind that kills thousands of people. A lot of the flooding came from this area, the Zowder-Zay, when
heavy rainfall and rising sea levels frequently caused it to spill over. The flat terrain of the
low countries means that the water can go for miles before being stopped. For this reason,
the Netherlands is a country of canals, which line the cities and carries the water out into the sea.
While local governments had been constructing minor dams here and there, filling in lakes and
rivers for centuries, it wasn’t until 1916 when the Dutch realized they needed to build...or die.
Due to the First World War, food imports were scarce and this was made worse by a
large flood destroying vast swathes of farmland. Several provinces went
bankrupt trying to mitigate the damage and the Netherlands was looming close to famine.
So in 1920, the Dutch parliament approved the Zuiderzeewerken , a programme proposed by Engineer
turned politician, Cornellis Lely. His idea was to dam up the entrance to the Zuiderzee and put
the inner lake to good economic use. The plan costed 200 million guilders,
or 285 billion euros today. It constructed the largest dam in European history,
shifting 23 million cubic meters of soil. The dam, called the Afsluitdyke is 32 kilometers long,
7.25 meters above sea level, and is used as a bridge to easily get from North Holland
to Friesland. There’s also a statue of Lely in the middle
and what looks like a caravan park on one of the islands, I don’t know for sure I can’t read Dutch
So how did they do it? While you may think that they’d just dump
vast amounts of dirt into the ocean until it- wait that’s actually what they did?
The Dutch more or less did just dump ton after ton of dirt and rocks in the ocean, topping it
off with soft clay and grass to keep it all in place. This wasn’t all at once, mind you, as
the Dutch first practiced with smaller distances first, before building islands along the way as
mid points and joining them up as they went. Then, pumping stations would be constructed
to simply throw the water from one side of the dam to the other.
Unlike every other public works project, the dam was completed two years ahead of
schedule on May 28th, 1932. The Zuiderzee, now a lake,
was renamed to the IJselmeer, after the river IJsell that flows into it,
and gradually, as the salt water was pumped out and replaced by freshwater from the river,
the lake became clean, fresh water. Most Dutch drinking water today comes from this massive lake.
With this brand new lake of 1,800 square kilometers, the Dutch had free reign to do
whatever they wanted with it. Critically, they had to make back all that money they
spent on building the dam. Starting in 1927, the Dutch government built another dam
around an area called the Wieringermeer , then draining off the water to create new land.
This made room for villages, farms, and industry, which would grow GDP and the economy.
The next “polder” as they’re called, was Nordoosdtpolder, which was going well until the
Nazis arrived. While work was expected to stop, the inquisitive Germans allowed it to continue
as they had plans on building their own polders in Germany and wanted to see how they worked.
Interestingly, this project connected the densely populated island of Urk
to the rest of the mainland, and the conservative island with it’s
own distinct dialect was forced to mingle with the rest of the Dutch population.
When the polder was completed after the war, scientists found that a lot of the
former coastline areas were affected by the lack of water, and many farmers suffered as
a result of poor crop yields. So, with that lesson learned,
when it came to make the next polder in 1957, the Flevoland polder, was built as an island, with a
small river flowing past the original coastline to preserve Helderland’s access to the sea.
Flevoland was built in two parts; North and South. The Northern (or eastern) part was built
first, followed by a short break, and then continued with the Southern Half.
Due to mass flooding and poverty in the rural province of Zeeland,
many farmers from the region moved up into Flevoland to begin a new life, kickstarting the
polder’s local economy. Furthermore, a housing crisis in Amsterdam forced many people to move
further away from the city, and many Dutch people found Flevoland as the perfect place to move to.
They named their new city “Leylstad”, after the man who the islanders owe their homeland to.
In 1986, Flevoland was combined with Noordoosdtpolder to create Greater Flevoland,
and was official accepted as the 12th province of the Netherlands. Today it is home to over 420,000
people and has enough farmland to make the tiny Netherlands the second largest exporter of food
in the world, behind only the USA. Flevoland is the largest artificial island in the world.
And then they built one more dam across the lake...just in case.
But this isn’t the only massive ocean infrastructure project that the Dutch
have spent millions of guilders on. In 1953, after a horrific flood in the
rural Zeeland province that killed over a thousand people, the Dutch government set out on building
the Delta Works just twenty days later. The plan boarded up four of the largest openings to the
estuaries in some of the largest barriers ever conceived. Each fortification is over 40 meters
wide and can withstand storm surges up to five meters higher than average, which seems low but is
about the height of your average two-story house. Ultimately, these structures are set to survive up
to 2,000 years given proper maintenance, and are even designed with ecological concerns in mind;
at the cost of millions more guilders, the Dutch government allowed one of these barriers to have
a gate to let in salt water, to ensure the many plants and animals of the region aren’t disrupted.
In less than 70 years, the Dutch have almost completely immunized themselves from flooding
and created bountiful wealth for their citizens in the process.
I am not exaggerating when I say this is one of the greatest achievements in human
history, and the experts agree. In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers
declared this dam system to be one of the seven engineering wonders of the modern world.
But the plans for more expansion didn’t end there. There’s no shortage of proposed ideas for where to
build in the future, with the next province of Marker Wadden having begun construction in 2016.
Due to the Ijsselmeer bay being cut off from the ocean by the Zuiderzeewerken dam system,
many of the local ecosystem has suffered as a result through lack
of regular tides and ocean salt water. By constructing many islands, shorelines,
bays, and lagoons, ecologists hope to foster new diverse ecosystems
to make up for the disruption caused by previous development works.
the Netherlands will continue to grow, building her way into prosperity,
as the population live, work, study, and play in absolute safety, well below sea level.
Maybe one day the Dutch will stop their quest to expand their shores.
But for now, the people of the Netherlands will continue
making the Netherlands.