On March 15, there will be elections not only for the Provincial Council, but also for the water board elections. But what do the Water Boards actually do? What topics are they working on? Presenter Koen Bugter will find out for you in Expeditie Noord-Holland. In the fourth episode, Koen wonders: can a dike breach like in 1960 in Amsterdam happen again?
In 1960, Amsterdam was hit by a major dike breach. The Tuindorp-Oostzaan district was completely flooded and thousands of people had to be evacuated, including 14-year-old Ton van Baardwijk. Now retired, he still lives in the neighborhood and remembers the disaster well. “I got up and looked out the window: the snow was gone, and I saw the water flowing hard where normally there was no water. We had to bring the things upstairs. There is a flood. The police came through the street. We everyone had to leave the house.
“There was panic. My father tried to make a dike in front of the door with frozen ground, but of course that didn’t help. The water came to 1.80 meters. When it storms you sometimes think about it.” Fourteen-year-old Ton is eventually successfully evacuated with 11,000 other Amsterdammers. It is never entirely clear how the dike could breach. A lot of people lose their belongings because of the water.
Millions of people currently live below sea level in North Holland. Koen wonders if the disaster of 1960 can happen again? In the Noorderlegmeer polder near Amstelveen, also a few meters below sea level, he meets Hilga Sikma, project leader of the water board, Amstel, Gooi en Vecht. “Whether a dike can break again? We never say that it can never happen. But we manage it very well. We have more than a thousand kilometers of dikes and we try to maintain them very well.
More peak showers
“In the Noorderlegmeerpolder we are six meters below sea level. But it is good to realize that climate change is making it more and more intense. There will be more peak showers. It is therefore also good that the polders are looking better. is being built, it will therefore have to be designed in a climate-robust way: that there is enough storage space, that there are enough green roofs. The spatial design is therefore essential.”
Large bathtub
John van Diepen is regional advisor to the Hollands Noorderkwartier Water Board and advises on spatial planning. The changing climate is already being taken into account when constructing new neighbourhoods. “The Buikslotermeer, for example, is a large bathtub. That is why enough open water is now being created during the construction. There will be several ditches. Everything will be raised on the land, so that the roads and the houses will be built high enough. That is anticipating on the peak showers. That all the water can soak into the ground.”