FARMS FROM THE SEA

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6808, 11 January 1929, Page 2

FARMS FROM THE SEA

Big Dutch Sckme DRAINING THE ZUYDER ZEE If you were a fisherman living on an island like your forefathers and dependent on the sea for a living (supplemented by the libations of artists and tourists), would you wolcome the prospect of having the sea obliterated, your island moved many miles inland, and deserted by artists and tourists, and yourself forced to become a farm■er or a carpenter? (states the “Daily Mail”). The question sounds foolish —oven a little mad. Yet the inhabitants of the island of Markon are asking it in all seriousness of the summer visitors that descend on them daily from Amsterdam. Just such a prospect confronts the fishermen of Marken, whose gabled cottages look out over the Zuyder Zee. In a few years crops will be growing where their nets have been east for generations, and villages will arise from the bottom cf the sea. This modern exhibition of magic will be brought about by the completion of tho Dutch Government’s vast scheme for draining the Zuyder Zee. The operation will cost more than forty million pounds. It will add somethink like 550,000 acres of cultivable land to the dry part of Holland, and ease the congestion of her crowded areas by providing homes fur at least 400,000 people. Tho operation is the most gigantic any Government has undertaken for centuries. It involves economic, social, and agricultural problems of the first magnitude, as well as ah engineering feat that has evoked the admiration of engineers tho world over. Instead of tho inland sea (as it appears from the low-lying coast), which at its greatest part is 46 miles long by 38 miles wide, there will be farms and villages as far as the eye can see. Of the Zuyder Zee nothing will remain but an artificial lake or reservoir covering 280,000 acres. Marken will become an ordinary Dutch villago with no waterway larger than a canal within 45 miles. Uric, a small island now in the middle of the Zuyder Zee, whose inhabitants fish entirely in the North Sea, will be hopelessly lost amid houses and growing crops. Tho backbone of this reclamation scheme is a massive dyke now being built across the entrance to the Zuyder Zee, a distance of nearly 21 miles. The first effect of this operation has been to add the island of "Wieringcn to the mainland on the western side. Between Wieringen and tho opposite coast of Frisia, 19 miles away, the main body of the dyko will have two sets of locks, admittinp vessels .up to 2000 tons register, with 30 sluices for controlling the water Sowing towards the North Sea from the Yssel, one of the branches of the Bhine. This dyke will be the largest of its kind in the world, and will afford ample protection against the heaviest storms. It will be 300 feet wide at the base and 25 feet above tho water line. A Tailway line on the top will give direct communication between Frisia and South Holland. The need for new land is so urgent that the Government lias decided to proceed immediately with the preparation of the North West- Polder (as the Dutch call a reclaimed area) adjoining tlicp resent coast of Frisia. In about six years’ time it will be dry. Then thcro will bo an interval of seven or eight yeaTS before the salt is entirely out of the soil and cultivation rendered possible. The total reclaimed land will be worth about £45,000,000, and will be the property of the Government. Ono problem is whether the Government will merely lease the land, as the Socialists demand, or sell outright in small holdings. . Even more serious is the question of the present population that has lived by fishing. The now generation are being taught farming, carpentry, bricklaying, and other useful trades—even cigar-making. A few may persist in following their father’s calling on the North Sea, btu the majority are expected to settle down as landsmen. Meanwhile the people of Marken and Volendam, and the other picturesque ports of tho Zuyder Zee are filled with gloom. They cannot be blamed for not taking what a beneficient Government calls “the long view” of their difficult flight. They only know that their beloved towns are doomed to become inland nonentities, and they are sad.