High water in the Netherlands: the rivers have been given space and they are now taking it

The water is very high in the east of the country. Report of a trip from Spijk to Deventer along flooded quays, a rowing boat and sandbags.

Wednesday 11.09 am Spijk

This? Geert van de Knaap (78) shrugs his shoulders and points to the water lapping against the railing of a walking path, which has drowned a park and which extends as far as the eye can see. “This,” he says, “is nothing.”

He has lived in Spijk for fifty-five years and he has not been afraid of the Rhine for a single day. It often flows into the Netherlands at Lobith, but it is more precise that it happens a few kilometers further on, at Spijk. The school is closed, the pub closed, the shop gone. Only the village hall is still there. Every day Van de Knaap walks around the village, three and a half to four kilometers. He can often walk outside the dike, but on Wednesday morning the Rhine flows into the country at high speed.

Oh, he says, as a municipal inspector drives past. The water has sometimes lapped against the dike here and that is no longer the case. But the further you follow the flow of the Rhine, the more dire the situation on the quays becomes.

11.36am Toll room

They call themselves “water tourists”, a man and woman from Arnhem who look down from the dike. The Europakade is closed there: a traffic sign that warns of obstacles sticks out above the water, it quickly reaches just below your knees. Then there is boggy grass, then wet grass and then the dry dike.

They came to Tolkamer because there you can see what the man calls “the impressive part”. The Rhine and the Waal are still one wide river, now completely. And actually, the man says, he thinks it’s not too bad. The woman points to further away: Germany. “It is completely flooded. That is different.”

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12.08 Tuindorp

The water flows on either side of the narrow dike past Tuindorp. Dining tables around what is supposed to be a recreational lake protrude above the water. On the radio, a spokesperson for the municipality of Deventer said that the water continues to rise “quite fast”. Further on, the Rhine and Waal split, and of the trees that normally indicate this separation, only the tops are now visible.

12.54 pm Farm de Middelwaard, Loo

Mirjam Krop and her son Roeland sail in a wooden boat from their farm to the dike. Krop and her husband run an organic oyster mushroom farm. This morning, husband and son had driven two pallets with the tractor to the quay, where helper Lars was already waiting to take them to customers. In the six years that he has been helping, the farm has often become an island. But he had never seen the water as high as it was now.

The front wheels of the tractor were no longer visible this morning. That was at a quarter to nine. Then the water rose further, so Roeland now rows his mother to the dike, where Lars is ready with a crate of mushrooms from another grower.

Krop has never had any worries about the water in the almost thirty years that she has lived on the farm. She knew what she was getting into. But in recent years she has become more concerned about climate change, about extremes. Old farmers sometimes warn: if the meltwater causes the Lower Rhine to rise and the wind suddenly starts to blow very hard and it freezes, you will get strange things, drifting ice, you just have to see whether the dikes hold up. The rowing boat is no longer sufficient. That is why there is meat from our own cow in the freezer.

1.57 pm Doesburg

The water on one side of the lock at Doesburg, where the IJssel has already split off from the Rhine, is approximately the same level as the water on the other side. And that, says a man from the nearby village of Drempt, rarely happens. “Usually the difference is about four or five meters.” He points to the water: it is higher outside the dike than the gardens inside the dike.

2.39 pm Zutphen

The water laps against the dikes along the N348 between Doesburg and Zutphen. The IJssel looks a bit like a lake. But because it flows through the floodplains and meadows, it does not flow over the quay in Zutphen. There are Linda and her husband. They live a few streets behind the river and, like many people, they went to watch. When she looked this morning, the water was lower. You can’t walk there anymore.

People say this is spectacular, she says. She thinks it’s not too bad. The waterworks here “are very beautiful.” The quays are high and modern and part of the footpath outside is intended to be flooded. A resident of one of the houses on the quay: “We are better off here than in Deventer.”

15.28 Deventer

There is a traffic jam in front of the parking garage on the edge of the center of Deventer and people are walking on the cycle path, it is so busy. Strolling day trippers view the water as if it were a historical work of art and they don’t know what to think of it. The fact that people walk on the cycle path is also due to the thick sandbags that lie on part of the sidewalk. They are as hard as rocks.

A restaurant itself barricaded its entrance with sandbags and wooden partitions. A stone in the wall is a reminder of how things once were. In 1926 the water was so high that perhaps only your head would stick out above it. In 1995 it reached your waist. And now?

Fenna Edens hangs her head over the railing. She estimates the difference between the quay and the water to be about ten or twenty centimeters. In 2011, her children’s friends canoed across the quay here. But that was before Room for the Rivers, she says immediately. Further on, trenches have been dug that now keep Deventer dry.

How long? The water is expected to reach its highest level on Thursday. Martin Lubberding looks out over the IJssel from his apartment. The Netherlands is well prepared, he believes. One question sometimes circles through his mind: “When will you have the dikes high enough?”

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