In the past hundred years, there has never been as much rain as now. Twice as much as normal in a year and a half. It causes misery, such as warped floors due to rising damp in the house. The accusing finger quickly goes to the Water Board. “But this is an abnormal situation,” says water chief Erik de Ridder of De Dommel Water Board. “And we do what we can.”
The Water Count is worried. “Because every rain shower currently causes extra flooding. And spring has yet to begin. Then the farmers want to get into the land and more rain may be on the way. No one can handle this. And we can’t do more.”
We speak to the watergraaf at the Vloeidijk, in the rural area on the south side of Goirle. De Ridder points to a piece of swampy grassland that was still under water a year ago: “This is a water storage area. If there is a lot of water in the area, we ensure that it is here, so that the residential area behind it can remain dry.”
“We drain as much water as possible here.”
This is the area in which he wants to tell you what he does to ensure that they keep their feet dry in Tilburg. He walks to a weir: “Here the water flows from Belgium towards Tilburg. You can see that the weir is completely lowered, so that we drain water as much as possible. We have been doing that throughout our entire area for the last year and a half.”
The water excavator just wants to say: he does everything to ensure that the water can drain away as quickly as possible. He likes to show this, because the impression is sometimes that the Water Board retains water in the fight against drought in the summer. Dozens of residents of Oisterwijk are suffering from moisture damage in their homes due to the high water level, some of them pointing the finger at the Water Board.
Unjustified, says the water council: “We are doing what we can to lower the groundwater level. But water trapped in the ground surface can rise. And that takes time before it can go away. Nature has to do its job, but nature is not really helping at the moment.”
“The water flows away, or it remains and causes a nuisance.”
The situation now is truly exceptional, according to De Ridder: “The area is completely full of water. It now behaves like a paved road. So the water that falls on it either flows away, or it remains and causes a nuisance, as is now the case in Oisterwijk.”
If we get a dry spring now, we can handle it for a while, according to the Watergraaf. But the problem with desiccation due to the intense rainfall is not over: “Unfortunately not. This dehydration has occurred because industry, farmers and drinking water companies have extracted more water from the deeper soil layers in recent decades than has been replenished. And that still happens.”
The large amount of water that is now falling only moves very slowly to deeper layers. “So we will have to adapt the area. Give space to the water where possible. We depend on nature, let’s all say a quick prayer to ensure that it will be a bit dry in the near future.”
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High water ravages Oisterwijk: bulging floors and damp spots in houses