With Global Warming a Growing Threat, the Dutch Gird to Battle the Sea--Again

In the southwest corner of the Netherlands, 62 giant steel gates stand permanently ready to slam shut against the sea.

The unique five-mile-wide storm barrier across the eastern estuary of the River Scheldt is a monument to the ingenuity of Dutch hydraulic engineers.

It is also the front line in the worldwide battle against global warming.

The expected rise in world temperatures due to a build-up of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” in the upper atmosphere has given this country’s centuries-old fight against the sea a new urgency.

Without an extensive system of sea and river defenses, half the land area and two-thirds of the Dutch people would be under as much as 20 feet of water at high tide.

If the greenhouse effect goes unchecked and the polar ice caps start to melt, the pressures on that system would increase tremendously.

“Sea levels have been rising by 20 centimeters (8 inches) a century. But now scientists anticipate a rise of anywhere between 35 and 85 centimeters (14 to 33 inches),” said Transport Ministry spokesman Bruno Voskuils.

This would greatly increase the risk of flooding, even in those regions now protected by the most sophisticated systems.

The barrier across the eastern Scheldt, completed in 1986, was the most expensive in Dutch history, eating up two-thirds of the $7-billion budget for coastal defenses in the delta region, where the Rhine, the Scheldt and Maas rivers flow into the North Sea.

In 1953, an estimated 1,835 people drowned when dikes in the area collapsed in the face of mountainous seas and hurricane-force winds. The new defenses, built to ensure that the tragedy is not repeated, were designed to cut the flood risk in the delta inlets to once in 4,000 years.

However, according to Peer Bolte of the Dutch Hydraulics Institute, a 28-inch rise in the sea level would increase the flood risk in the delta region to once every 400 years.

And the problems caused by global warming do not end with sea levels. The phenomenon is also expected to increase the severity of North Sea storms by about 10%.

The Netherlands had a foretaste of what this might mean when freak storms last winter triggered the most serious flood alert since 1957.

The sea was held at bay, but damage to the line of sand dunes that forms a vital part of the country’s defenses cost $30 million to repair.

Next century, the bills look likely to be much larger.

A report published in September said a 24-inch rise in sea levels would mean spending $6 billion on reinforcing dikes, building extra defenses for industrial and urban areas and upgrading pumping stations that keep reclaimed land dry.

The Dutch government has committed itself to stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions at the 1989 level in four years.