Flooded meadows, ditches and canals that are filled to the brim. In Drenthe too, the heavy rainfall dominates what it looks like outside. The four water boards in Drenthe have their hands full, but see the situation stabilizing for now.
At Waterschap Hunze en Aa’s they are not sitting idle these days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. “We are busy draining. This is causing the water level in the large canals to drop, but that is happening very slowly,” says spokesperson Cora Kuiper of the Hunze en Aa’s Water Board. “In some places, such as De Veenmarken, it is difficult to get rid of the water. It will take a few weeks before we reach normal water levels again.”
The abundance of water also has consequences for the living environment of animals in Drenthe’s nature. For example, the beaver enclosures in the Hunze and Aa’s water board area suffered damage. “In recent days we have walked a lot along the floodplains to map out the situation of the beavers. Then we saw that the beaver enclosures had suffered damage. We immediately resolved this with volunteers, so that the beavers can now return to their quarters,” says Kuiper.
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