The water management
This part of the site will answer questions such as the following:
What is the present situation of the Delta water systems? What is doing well?
This last question is directed at the functions that the Delta area has such as fishing, recreation...
How do we plan to manage the Delta area in the future?
These are the questions that are still being thought about. The Provinces of Zeeland, Noord-Brabant, and Zuid-Holland, for example, are busy drawing up a complete future plan for the entire Delta area. They are doing this (within the Delta Insight project called Delta Inzicht) in consultation with parties concerned and those parties that are interested.
The Ministry of Transport and Public Works orders and bundles the information on the state of the Delta waters.
Once these projects have been rounded off, the ‘anno 2003 answers' will be given to the questions above. We say, ‘anno 2003', for the answers to these types of questions will continue to change with time, the changing circumstances and changing insights.
Changing water systems
The Delta works had a number of unexpected side effects in the areas of environment and nature. The closing of the estuaries offered not only safety, but also led to unprecedented changes in the water systems of the Delta area.
The tides, whose influence had once been visible far inland, disappeared. The gradual transition from fresh to salt water was gone, along with the corresponding flora and fauna. Channels and creeks silted up. Mudflats and sandbars were submerged for good and chunks of shoreline fell victim to erosion as the water was now constantly slapping against the banks at the same level. The loss of a free channel to the sea caused a sharp increase in river sediment which was often contaminated.
All of this can never be completely undone. The water of the freshwater lake Brielse Meer will never again be salty. A return to the old situation is, however, not the aim. We are trying to reduce the effects of human interference, to preserve the scenic assets, and where possible, to restore and to develop. Some areas offer even excellent opportunities for this. Particularly, in the Haringvliet, the Hollandsch Diep, and the Biesbosch are water systems that can be largely restored.
New water management
Shortly after the 1953 Flood Disaster, defence against the sea dominated the way in which we dealt with water. Nowadays, coast protection requires a broad approach aimed at the entire Delta area and her inhabitants: from man, who wants to keep his feet dry, up to and including the smallest starfish that has attached itself to the stone pitchings of the Eastern Scheldt dike.
At the end of the 1980s, the government had actively begun to anticipate this and a new approach to water management began to take shape. All interests from the entire Delta area were involved: the quality of the water, the environment, the development of nature, fishing and recreation, but also the fresh water supplies, agriculture, shipping and industry. This so-called ‘integral water management' weighed all these aspects against each other. However, in all of the cases, protection from flooding has to be guaranteed.
This new system of water management has now been successfully applied by the Ministry of Transport and Public Works and it is where --- besides engineers --- ecologists and morphologists are involved. Fixed bank protection has made way for environmentally-friendly banks. In certain places, sand from dunes is allowed to shift freely because sometimes non-interference results in lovely natural areas. Man-made islands dredged up for breeding attract different types of birds. The abundance of fish is ever on the increase due to the creation of special spawning areas.
The development of nature: the pros and cons
The new approach has led to a large number of nature development projects in the Delta since 1985. These projects varied from environmentally-friendly bank protection --- to protect delicate eroding banks with dams in front of them --- to pumping up sand to raise the dunes and sandbars for the birds. The areas of sand dunes have grown into lovely parts of the Dutch coast where sea buckthorn and spindle trees bloom. On the former work island of Neeltje Jans, where once were cement works and building docks, islands for birds, sea inlets and dune areas have been laid out.
Today's water management requires continual consideration of the situation, a weighing of the pros and cons as to where and where not to redevelop, where to develop new nature, where it is only fitting to guide and where nature can simply be allowed to go her own way.
Delta Insight
Policymakers cannot get around the developments in the Delta area: the rise in sea-level, the increased river flows and the metropolis forming roundabout.
The question is whether the seemingly threatening developments could form opportunities after all. These opportunities might help find ways to erase the ecological dark sides of the Delta works; opportunities for recreation, for fishing, for shipping, without this being to the detriment of other functions in this area
Integral view
With this in mind, the Provinces of Zuid-Holland, Noord-Brabant, and Zeeland are conferring with a large number of organizations on formulating a complete future plan for the Delta waters. The Delta InZicht steering committee, in which the three provinces, the State, the municipalities, the water boards and all manner of interest groups are represented, employs the following approach. It began by considering how people would want the Delta waters to look thirty years from now if they would not have to keep all kinds of laws and practical objections in mind, for example. In April 2002, a series of discussions were held on how to bridge the most important differences between the picture of the future and the present situation.
Idea of the future
It is founded on four mainstays: sustainability, the unique character of the Delta area, the European dimension and the results of the changing climate.
It is composed according to the layered approach, one which has also been used in the Fifth National Policy Document on Spatial Planning. The most important changes in the idea of the future (Toekomstbeeld) occur in the foundation layer. The foundation of the Delta area is by nature vital, changeable. Man has bound that dynamic through land reclamation in the second millennium and through the construction of dams in the past fifty years. The Idea of the Future has restored part of that dynamic so that the water systems can function once more in a healthy way as estuary. The rivers are clean and flow again through all of the Delta waters to the sea. The hard division between the Delta waters has, in fact, been given up, without any harm to safety.
Many functions profit from the restoration of the natural vitality (fishing, recreation, shipping). For those functions for which that is not the case, provisions to compensate for the negative effects have been included in the Idea of the Future.
Relevant websites