EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 231, 29 August 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

HOLLAND’S COLOSSAL TASK. Holland is building huge dykes. Romantic, picturesque and sometimes storm-tossed, the Zuyder Zee can now be crossed, safely and comfortably, in a car. In another few years, no doubt, the swil't electric trains of the Netherlands Railways will be flashing along the wonderful dam which now links the North Holland coast with Friesland.

Not content with the ordinary, every-day business of subduing the North Sea, the Dutch must turn their attention to the construction of this great enclosure dam, over twenty miles long, across tlm opening of the Zuyder Zee. This vast reclamation scheme, which will add over half a million acres to the area of Holland, was contemplated as long ago as 1667, hut, it. was not till 1919, that Lely, then Minister for Public Works, succeeded in getting the Dutch Government to approve of the plan. The idea was to turn this inland sea into an immense lake, drain half a million acres of it, and leave roughly two hundred thousand acres for an accumulation lake. The reclaimed land was to he divided into four huge polders. When the work of building the dam began in 1920 it was planned to start reclaiming the area of 50,000 acres in the north-west corner of the Zuyder Zee. Huge sill dams (or mattresses) made of brushwood and weighted with stones were sunk in position outside the section of darii upon which work was to be attempted. Behind this temporary barrier the work of dumping heavy loam, sand, boulder clay, and brushwood mattresses proceeded. Some idea of the magnitude of the task may he gauged by the fact that graving docks and harbours were built for use as working bases. As the dam spread and grew and the opening became narrower, still another difficulty had to be faced—the scouring action of the racing water. The bill for this scheme will he proportionately large—somewhere in the neighbourhood af thousand million Dutch florins.—(G.)