It’s wet and it’s getting wetter. Until this week, about 50 millimeters of rain had already fallen, in the days before Christmas almost 50 millimeters were added. Another 50 millimeters are expected to fall before New Year’s Eve. The water level in canals and rivers is and therefore remains high.
And that is already visible in various places in Drenthe. For example, De Reest is already overflowing at De Schiphorst, the Drentse Aa is overflowing its banks at Zuidlaren and people in Holtheme near Coevorden suddenly have a swan in their flooded backyard. It is all hands on deck for the water boards.
Gert Meijering is area manager at the Vechtstromen Water Board. He manages thirty hectares around the Coevorder lock and De Haandrik lock. There the water of the Vecht meets the water from the canal between Almelo and Coevorden. The high water level and the expected rain ensure that the water board is extra alert. “Compare it with a morning rush hour. Cars come from all sides and they all have to pass through a point. It is the same here. Almost everything has to go through the Vecht. But at a certain point the Vecht becomes full. So we try to get as much water as possible to discharge it while it is still possible.”
This can partly be achieved by opening the gates of the dams, but you must be careful. “The highest water level in the Vecht is expected during the Christmas holidays. It will be really exciting on Boxing Day.”
It is not the case that all employee leave has been cancelled, but Meijering and his colleagues are on call. “We have been scaled up to crisis phase 2. We are closely monitoring saturated dikes and damage to pumping stations, locks and weirs. If necessary, dike monitoring will be called in.”