The look of the beaver family has turned into broken dead white willow trunks. The animals themselves have been undergoing renovations for weeks to keep the entrance made of wood burrow in the water. Probably in vain. Because the water channel in the floodplain of the Gelderse Poort, a nature reserve near Nijmegen, is virtually dry. And yet the end is not in sight.
How different it was last year, when the water was still 6 meters high at the place where the beaver family lives during the floods. It is exemplary for the increasing extremes in the water levels of the melting and raining river Rhine.
Due to the drought and heat of recent months and the snowless winter in the Alps, half the normal amount of water currently flows through the river. A so-called ‘low discharge’ is more common, but this year it came exceptionally early. And that is problematic now that both nature and agricultural crops need plenty of water.
The situation is now dire. Since Wednesday there has been an official ‘de facto water shortage’. A crisis team must now ensure that the water that still flows through the Netherlands carries ships, supplies nature and agriculture with water, makes the flood defenses work and provides drinking water.
The increasing extremes require a total change in thinking in the Dutch water landscape, says Jaco van Heemskerk, hydrologist at Natuurmonumenten. ‘The focus has always been on keeping your feet dry and draining water quickly. But now we also have to think about how we can retain the water if there is no rain for weeks.’
Winners and losers
That assignment starts as soon as the Rhine flows into the Netherlands at Lobith, in Gelderland. The drought is visible in the Gelderse Poort, the first nature reserve to visit the Rhine on its journey. The hawthorns are having a hard time and the ditches around the river are dry. The fish that lay dead on the bottom have been eaten by the birds in recent weeks.
The river landscape adapts to wet and dry periods, says Twan Teunissen of Staatsbosbeheer Rivierengebied Oost. Standing at the bottom of a dried-up pool, he points both enthusiastically and fascinated to the edge where purple and white flowers are in full bloom: ‘These plants came up here because they do very well in drought conditions. That way you have winners and losers in this day and age.’
Teunissen (48) has seen the Gelderland floodplains change during his lifetime. As a child he walked here with boots on well into the summer, because the ground was soggy. But now that is no longer necessary from March.
The water is only held in sparsely in the Gelderse Poort and flows quickly through the area. As a result, from the floodplain area in the distance, you can see several sprinklers from farmers trying to save their crops. Now that the ditches are empty and the extraction of surface water is prohibited, they are forced to pump up groundwater at great expense.
The drought is quickly felt in some high-lying parts of the Netherlands because the soil in many places is made of sand, a type of soil that hardly retains water, says river expert Alphons van Winden. In addition, the water cannot be carried everywhere easily. Because the river level is higher than the land and not everywhere is a network of ditches with which you get the water on land.
Freshwater supply
Meanwhile, the water of the Rhine splits in two in the Gelderse Poort. One half goes to the Waal. The other half goes via Pannerdensch Kanaal towards the IJssel and the Nederrijn.
The part that goes through the IJssel, flows into the IJsselmeer. The lake serves as the largest freshwater supply in the Netherlands, which water boards from the surrounding provinces and drinking water companies make grateful use of by pumping water from it.
In times of water scarcity, this requires coordination. Because if you turn one ‘water knob’, you soon put another party at a disadvantage, which depends on the same water.
For example, more water can be extracted from the IJsselmeer to be used for agriculture or to prevent the river level from falling further for shipping, says Bart Vonk, acting chairman of the National Coordination Committee for Water Distribution (LCW), which was responsible for this until Wednesday. . But because of the vulnerable nature reserves and the birds that breed in the spring, they are careful with it.
Fight against the salt water
The Rhine water that travels further inland via the Lower Rhine first passes through Gelderland, where it is now so low that several ferries no longer sail. Via Utrecht, the water continues its journey towards the parts of the Netherlands that are below sea level and where the clayey soil is more resistant to drought.
In the area where the water travels its last kilometers to the sea, when the water discharge is low, a battle is waged that is typical for the area on the coast: the battle against the salt water. This bubbles up like seepage water from the low-lying soil and is washed into the land from the sea. The latter is even more threatening when the water level of the Rhine is low, because the little river water can then barely push back the seawater.
The Rijnland Water Board, which roughly covers the area from IJmuiden to Gouda, is therefore continuously working to flush fresh water through their area, says deputy dike warden Sjaak Langeslag. Because if they don’t, the agricultural crops and plants in the nature reserves will die from the high levels of salt.
If there is little fresh water from the river and it hardly rains, emergency measures are needed. For example, they opened the locks there in mid-July to allow more water to flow from the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal through the Groene Hart. It affected shipping and surrounding drinking establishments that also use the canal.
In addition to the danger of the salt water, the fact that the difficult decision was taken is also due to the low peat soil that occurs in the area, Langeslag explains. Peat peat is a rare type of soil that needs continuous water. As soon as it dries, it starts to rust, breaks down and doesn’t come back, explains Langeslag. As a result, the bottom subsides and that is a problem for an area that is already below sea level. Certainly because some dikes are made of low moor peat or are standing on it.
bird watchers
Before the drought, nature in the Gelderse Poort already had a harder time getting enough water because of another problem: the sinking river bed. Because the river is fixed between the dikes and the groynes in the water, the water comes in at high speed. The sediment that comes with the water scrapes out the river bed, so that the same amount of water is 2.5 centimeters lower every year. The river overflows less quickly and the surrounding nature suffers from this.
For that reason, it is all the more important that the water is retained in the area, says Teunissen. They try to do this provisionally by opening the locks at a small piece of reed land. According to Teunissen, it is already bearing fruit. It has been quite wet for a few years now, causing rare wetland birds to return to the area. Nijmegen birdwatchers can have fun with it. ‘They stood here on the dike every evening in early summer, listening to the sound of the Bittern.’