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| The wind, waves and ocean currents, it is hoped, will drive the man-made peninsula of sand landward to replenish the coast of the Netherlands. (AFP Photo) |
Kijkduin,
Netherlands. In its age-old war to keep back the sea, low-lying Netherlands has
dumped sand onto a surface larger than 200 football fields just off the coast —
and will wait for nature to do the rest.
The wind,
waves and ocean currents are the next “engineers” in this innovative project
that will see the transferred sand — all 20 million cubic meters of it — driven
landward to form a natural barrier against the North Sea’s relentless
onslaught. The elements have started moving the tip of the bar, which already
almost touches land at low tide.
Over a
period of 15 to 20 years, the sand will wash toward the coast, reinforcing
beaches and existing sand dunes that help protect the Netherlands, more than a
quarter of which lies below sea level.
“Under
natural circumstances, the Dutch coast would erode away slowly,” said Leo
Linnartz, an ecology expert who advised the project’s developers on behalf of
the World Wide Fund for Nature. Without reinforcing fragile shores, floods
would eventually be inevitable, he said.
Over the
decades, the Dutch have developed world-renowned expertise in the field of
hydro-engineering, notably in constructing dams, dikes and bridges.
Around
17,500 kilometers of embankment have already been built along its coast and rivers.
The new
project was conceived by a group of experts commissioned by the Dutch
government to help solve the country’s ongoing headache. It used dredgers to
suck up ocean-floor sand 10 kilometers off the coast then dump it closer to
land. Some of the huge machines were able to carry as much as 10,000 cubic
meters of sand at one time.
If the
experiment works, the sandbar project, situated between the seaside suburbs of
Kijkduin and Ter Heijde near The Hague, will be replicated elsewhere in the
country. And the system could even be exported.
“We used to
do it in such a way that we used a lot of stones and concrete and things like
that,” said Linnartz. “But nowadays we prefer to work together with nature, to
cooperate with natural forces.”
The idea of
strengthening the coastline with sand is not new, Linnartz said. But placing it
off the coast and allowing nature to take its course is not only a fresh
approach to the problem but less harmful to the environment than simply dumping
more sand on the dunes, he said.
While
traditional shoring up happens around every five years, the new plan based on
the sand’s natural movement will last 15 to 20 years.
Agence
France-Presse
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