GREAT RECLAMATION SCHEME

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 211, 20 August 1927, Page 6

GREAT RECLAMATION SCHEME

few days back some reference was made to a fairly big land reclamation project that was being undertaken in the fen country in England. By this week’s mail there comes to hand some account pf a vastly greater enterprise of a like nature on the part of the Dutch. Probably the greatest feat ol engineering in progress at the present time is that of draining the famous Zuyder Zee, in Holland, in order to reclaim an area of about 9000 square miles. This land is being reclaimed in the truest sense of the word, fot as recently as the middle of .the 14th century that part of Holland which is now the Zuyder Zee was dry land The Dutch have been fighting the sea for centuries. Much of their agricultural land is actually below sea level, and only protected by dykes, the slopes of which are even used as grazing laud or as intensely culti vated gardens, where the famous Dutch bulb industry is carried on. And new land is continually being added to the mainland. Here and there dykes are erected in shallow water, the pumps get to work, and new acres put into service. But never has anything 8 o gigantic been planned or undertaken as the Zuyder Zee scheme. When the work is completed agricultural land equal to onethirteenth ot the present total area of Holland will be added to the country The idea of draining the Zuyder Zee has been put forward repeatedly during the last fifty years. It's advocates said it was the simplest thing imaginable. “All you have to do, 1 ” their said, “is to construct the dyke across the entrance of the sea, drain the water through sluice gates at low tide, pump out the rest, and the work is finished.” The bill to enable this work to be undertaken was. however, passed only in July, 1918. The official inauguration of the undertaking, i.e., the dumping into the water of the first load of earth took place with much pomp in June, 1920. But the work was taken in hand seriously only in 1924, and imw then one mile and a half of the'dyke has been completed. The remaining distance is about 21 miles, and it ; s estimated that 20 years will pass before the last load of clay definitely encloses the Zuyder Zee and the draining can begin. The famous and picturesque fishing village of Valen dam, Hoorn. Edam, and many others, the island of Marken, will become agricultural centres. The fishes will be replaced by Friesian cows, and the folks will handle milk pails and blitter churns instead of sails and nets. Not altogether, though. For the deepest part of the Zuyder Zee will remain a lake, fresh water replacing the salt and, it is hoped, trout the herrings. There has been some argument, at times rather heated, over the question whether the new land, which will naturally contain a certain amount of salt, will make rich pastures, and thus repay the tremendous cost of the scheme. But it is rightly pointed out that on previous occasions the land won ha*k from the sea soon changed into ‘‘sweet” and fertile ground.