Keeping Out the Sea: Massive Flood defense in the low-lands…

I am embarrassed I made that title so Berkeley-esque… The Powerful Statement: Made More Dramatic by the Colon and Following 6 Words...
all those guilty of such things, you know who you are.  I almost want to slap myself for it, but figured this is one of those occurrences I must make known in a public cry for help.

To make a long story short, much of Holland is below sea-level (in-case you haven't gathered that is why I am here) and a lot of the parts not below sea-level are still subject to flooding from rivers.  Therefore, flood defences are a very strong national interest (unlike the United States for many reasons).

 Here are mostly photos from the field trip I took out to see the barriers over a couple of days in Zeeland and elsewhere of the Deltawerken, the Delta Works Projects.  I  will avoid going into too much detail (if you want it, email me or wait for my report) so I’ll just show the pics and include a few basics. Delta” refers to the Delta of the Rhine-Meuse (Maas)-Scheldte rivers.  For more details online, check out http://www.deltawerken.com/

MESLANTKERING in Hoek van Holland.

The suffix “kering” means “barrier” in Dutch.  It… was… huge… (you will notice a theme).  Sadly the photo doesn’t do it justice, but here is Matthijs in front of it to give you kind of an idea.  And no, I didn't fly my heli-overhead to get the shot, I borrowed it from online.

(I did take this one though)

 This gate is open now, but closes off the harbor (haven in Dutch) to the sea when there is a storm surge, (when the water level rises up very high as a result of a storm/heavy winds) or when they decide to test it (this Saturday) in order to make sure it will work when it counts (as in, during a surge).
  Apparently they used a crappy grade steel when initially constructing it which means they have more maintenance than they would like.  Costly, but they will still do it due to safety.

Here is a video of the barrier with awesome dramatic music to accompany.


Matthijs (pronounced: Ma-tie-us/Mathias) is a kind, kind, and really smart man. I was put in touch with him by one of my professors from UC-Berkeley. He is a risk-management consultant/”expert” for the country and a part time professor at the Technical University in Delft. He spent time with me all day driving me around the area looking at flood-defence sights and showing me the massive amounts of greenhouses in this part of the country (which I accidentally deleted the photos).

They use so many greenhouses to extend the growing season (it’s cold here!) and export. From what I could tell it was mostly tomatoes and peppers. Interestingly enough, there are enough greenhouses in this area that the rainwater from the roofs actually is an issue for drainage and flooding.

I told Matthijs that if I can’t find a job in the US, I’ll be back to competing with the Polish migrants for the greenhouse jobs. He apparently thought that was funny. I ended up with free dinner Tuesday night, so my humor must be getting me some points (or pity).

I learned a ton and we had great discussions on flood policy approaches in the Netherlands and the US. Incidentally, he does not understand us and our flood policy—why we wont’ step it up when we know things aren’t right. Go figure, neither do I.

Haringvliet Sluices 
Near the Haringvliet estuary, these are sluices which have a long arm extending down, to provide a barrier to the North Sea during flood conditions, a storm surge, and twice a day during high tide.  This barrier works to control the river and water levels in a large part of the country.  On one side of the barrier is the North Sea and on the other side are the Rhine and Maas Rivers.

Construction period from 1956-1971

It was pretty cool and they take you on a tour of it after watching a video on construction (all in Dutch), you can even go inside.

Bear thought he looked rather regal in the wind, so here.

And me.  Behind me those long arms (like something out of Starwars) lower down with the barrier attached at the ends to block out the Sea twice per day during high tide.  This helps to keep the salty seawater out of the country.  It takes 20 minutes for lifting or closing each time.

The gates are 10.5 meters high. so about 5 meters protrude above the normal water level.




Oosterscheldekering (Oh-sta-schkell-da-kerin)

Ooster means “eastern” and Schelde refers to the Scheldt River.  So it is the Eastern Scheldte River barrier.  Also massive.  The process of construction is as unbelievable as its size.  Once again, scale… enormous. You kind of just have to be there. 

See below…  fyi, you can drive across it.  You can also go inside of it.  Bear and I had a blast and informative time.  Some photos below.

 This is out of my windshield so there is a glare.  The Scheldte River is to the left, the North Sea (Noord Zee) is to the right.

These levees/dikes are so much bigger (and stronger) than the ones in the US. I tried to get a photo of Bear on the levees for scale, but with no success!

Some might argue that Bear is actually looking at the D>50 (grainsize) on the levee. You have to be a hydrologist to appreciate that terrible joke (thanks KP).

Now, to feel as though YOU were there with us, please picture me, dying laughing, as I’m propping up bear and scooping him up off the levee.  And others walking by, not sure whether to laugh with me, or just keep walking and not make eye contact.

I felt the need to get Bear’s pathetic attempts on film after 5 minutes of trying to keep him upright, so much to his chagrin, here is bear’s first video in Europe.  I told him I wouldn’t post it to my blog, but I lied.

Fishermen at the edge of the barrier.  This is the North Sea on the left, and the river draining through is the Scheldte.

From Where is all this water coming from?

The construction of this barrier was incredible.  They built 3 islands/land masses and then connected them by this giant barrier/dam.  I think an aerial photograph would best explain it.

Blue is water, green is land.

The two large landmasses were reclaimed long ago.  But the two in the middle were the new ones, built specifically for the construction of this barrier.  The 3 straight segments are the dams/ the Oosterschedldekering.

Interestingly enough, they had initially built a ring completely around the area where they wanted to build the barrier.  The blocked it with dikes and drained it out, so they were on "dry land."  They then did much of the construction (including fortifying the sandy Sea bottom with mattresses of rocks, stones, gravel, and boulders), installed the piers, breached the levee and flooded it when it was ready to go. Pretty incredible.

All of this land has been "reclaimed" from the sea. This process of reclaiming land from the is not unlike parts of New Orleans or the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California, though it is a much grander scale here in Holland.

DUNES/DUINS:

Dunes are a major part of the flood defence system here. The dunes here are sometimes 3 km wide and the Dutch dredge sand from way off shore and bring it in onshore to compensate beach erosion.  In many cases, these dunes offer a protection level of a 1 in 100,000 storm!  That is 1000x greater than the protection level of the United States.  To clear that up, these dunes are so big that a storm/surge only has a 1 in 100,000 chance  every year at reaching the Netherlands.  See photos below. I took this shot at the western/southern most end of the Oosterscheldekering  

The Oosterscheldekering is also a national park and had a sweet water-park including: how the barriers were built, boat rides in the area, an exhibit on the 1953 flood (the catastrophic event which changed flood policy forever… though strikingly fewer died in this flood (1835) than in Katrina (around 2000), yet it has such importance in forming policy and perception in Holland.

Lastly, after the visit at the museums, I drove the rest of the way across the Oosterscheldekering, got off the main road, parked my car and sat on the beach next to this barrier for quite some time.  I even put my feet in the North Sea.  I was told this was cold water, but growing up on the Great Lakes, I really could not agree. J

What a great couple of days.  I realize this is vague and seemingly incomplete, but I will save discussions for another time, or perhaps the presentation following this research.  Thus, you have seen mostly just what I have seen.  But rest assured, Mrs. Geraldine Knight and CED who funded this fellowship, I am taking good notes, asking lots of questions, and will not disappoint.

I'll leave it at that. I have many more pictures but there is no room left on the blog. So email me if you're interested!

Cheers!
Oh, and it's Saturday, so ....

GO BLUE!!!

friendly frogs and rental cars

This post is from Last week in Delft... my apologies for the delay... so much to tell, so little attention span.

Just before I sat down to write this, I had gotten back from the centre of town (it is about 10:30pm right now) and headed up to bed, when something scurried across the floor—for a moment I got heebie jeebies that it might be a mouse, though this place is super clean I really couldn’t imagine it… when said creature froze in the middle of the floor I saw it was a toad!

So, I tried various approaches to get it out because lord only knows how dutch treat toads—I wanted to protect it from some unspeakable fate…  :) only joking

My approach?

1) plastic cups convinced it only further under the table and behind the cords…

 2) Toad was indifferent to my banging on the table…

 3) my opening the door and making smoochie sounds didn’t work, so

4) I encouraged it verbally out the door. Also failed.   

Conclusion??

Dutch frogs do not speak English.

The tiniest (and greatest) car ever...

Despite that the rental car place needed something with my address on it in order to rent to me (my address is currently is a storage unit in Berkeley thus I did not have it), I managed to sweet talk/laugh my way into just giving the gentleman every card in my wallet to make an imprint of.  He in turn gave me keys to this sweet blue Ford, DIESEL. J  

(Btw, if Ford would like to buy this photo from me, as the automakers of our renewable future... comment to my blog and we'll work out an agreement.)

Anyway...

The gentlemen in the shop tried to give me the only pink car in the station but I had thoughts otherwise.

In tribute to the late and sexy Patrick Swayze, NOBODY puts Baby in the corner and NOBODY gives Jessie keys to a pink car.

The only time I got lost today was in trying to get out of Delft.  Despite my new “TomTom” (explanation coming), I could not find my way out of said Medieval city (they knew what they were doing to enemies even then hundreds of years ago!) because so many roads were blocked or under construction. So I did laps, and made turns on roads which I could NOT believe were roads (they were small), but alas, my 3-foot wide car sure enough fit down them and I pretty much decided my route based on facial expressions from people I passed. I got no frowns, no swears, horns, or middle fingers, so I think I done right.  J 

TOM TOM!!!!

TomToms are the greatest GPS we never had.  First of all, they are CORRECT and they have graphics of all the turns you are going to make including what signs look like on the highway. They also give you directions 2 ahead of time.  For example, “in 800 yards make a left, then stay in the left lane, go 400 yards and make another left!”  This was amazing and far surpasses any US GPS unit I have ever found.
OH TomTom, won’t you come back with me to the US and marry me?  

Here are a couple more photos from my great rental car day...  This is blue car in front of the levee.  The people are on top of the levee for scale.

And lastly, (yes I took this while driving), the landscape patterns of canals and agriculture...

Highlights from this trip:

photos to come in a future post... the massive scale of the flood defences, the geometric patterns of the landscape (canals, agriculture), dunes, standing in the North Sea...

Windmolen, vriend, beer

This IS the Kinderdijk. (pronounced Kinder – dike) It is a world Heritage site.  Click to read more.

(by the way if you click any of my photos, they load larger in a new window)

 Quintessential Dutch Stereotype.

The Kinderdijk is an area outside of Delft, where windmills dominate the landscape.  As I may have mentioned before, much of Holland is below sea-level and most of it is depends upon an intricately controlled system of canals, levees, and dikes.  In this area in particular, a series of windmills pump water out of lower land and raise it to higher land, ultimately it into a canal.

THEY ALL STILL WORK!  This is so cool. 

Though it is rare to see them all functioning at one time, there were one or two working when we were there.  It’s a free area to visit, except for the opportunity to go into one of them, but really we couldn’t pass that up.  So here are some images from inside!

I realize this photo doesn't really show you much, but you can see all the cogs and cranks working on the windmill just being propelled by the breeze from outside.

Took this one from inside the windmill up top. Hence the obstruction of the arm-thingie (that's its official name)

Note the cows. They're real.

Hey how'd that one get in there? And Bear, how did you pass through the gated area designed to keep people and Bears OUT?!!!

Oh, and by “we”…since you brought it up...

 I’d like to point out that when I said "we," I was no longer refer to  the “royal we”, or to myself and Bear,  nor  do I  mean my friend Ben from the US who just got here today… but in “we” I refer to my real-live, very own, Dutch friend, Wim. Pronounced to us like Vim. It’s short for Willem, so for those of you who need to Americanize everything, that would be like Will short for William.  Anyway, Wim is a researcher/phD student at TU Delft (also levees, flooding, etc) and was encouraged by his supervisor to help me out for the week, but I’d like to think that he wants to do it on his own.   See, that's him in the photo, and no, I didn’t use photoshop.

Thursday morning, the day of our trip out there, I thought to myself,

“okay… the true test of whether Wim is actually a friend whether he is just “encouraged” by his supervisor to spend time with me depends on how he feels when I bring my Bear out in public.” 

Since I had meetings in the morning, I had to hide Bear under my professional guise of a messenger bag and scarf until I was out of the university.  Mission Successful.

On the ride over, we are chatting about life, things in the U.S as compared to Holland, speeding tickets, the drinking age, etc… but I am focused on Bear and trying to decide how I am going to break the news. 

I look at bear (he’s hidden in my messenger bag on the floor).  I look at Wim.  Then I look back at Bear and back at Wim.  Deep breath.

Ultimately I explain that I had this bear, (thank you Benson family) that he was my companion and that Bear travels everywhere.  I explain partially that sometimes, Bear likes to have his picture taken, sometimes bear likes to protest war with chants in NYC like "More snuggle, less war"... sometimes, bear flips you the bird or uses italian hand gestures to get a point across, sometimes he hugs, and sometimes  just sometimes, Bear likes to get silly.  So I mentioned that Bear would most likely make an appearance today at the Kinderdijk. 

Wim seems okay with this.  So I feel glad.  And I say, “good, now you won’t think I’m crazy.”  And Wim replies that he still thinks I’m crazy, but he understands a little more now why.  I was waiting for a chuckle or a smile after he said this, something encouraging that he was joking, but none came.

Right.

I think one of the fantastic things about these windmills was how simple a concept and how it is all mechanical and powered by wind.  

Another really cool thing that happened is finally I was able to translate for someone ELSE instead of the other way around all the time. We tried to ask a woman where the visitors center was first in Dutch and then in English but she spoke neither so ultimately I asked in Portuguese and alas… success! I felt slightly more useful.

The best part about this last picture is that just as Wim and I had left the windmill, I looked to the right of the doorway, and saw some Dutch wooden shoes.

 So did Wim apparently.

 I glanced around and began thinking how nice Bear would look in those wooden shoes. 

Simultaneously, Wim asked if perhaps Bear wouldn’t like to try on some shoes.

Who’s crazy now? 

Red Lights, Bicycles, and Beers, oh My!

First off, I have missed a few days due to laziness and lack of reliable internet.  So the next posts may jump out of order bur for now (Sept 19) I am in Amsterdam.

Friday 18 September, Saturday 19 September

After a morning meeting with another hydro/flood researcher and 2 coffees (I love this place!) in Den Haag where the parliament and queen are, I am back in Amsterdam today and my friend Ben from school just came to meet me for the week.  We’re renting a really cool studio flat on Prinsengracht  Street in the same canal house building as my new friend Bonnie (she and her husband are expats, and is a friend of my friend Jess who lives in San Francisco).  It’s a really cute quirky basement studio flat complete with cool boards/planks overhead, a bathroom in the middle of the studio, cow lights, a fireplace, fake plastic tulips, and a patio with a neat garden with a “water feature.”  It is really cool,has a lot of character, and is on a quiet street in the center of town. Lovely.

Parliament in Den Haag

I regret I have no pictures of the following events…

My first bike ride on my first dutch bike!

It was fantastic , but LOOK OUT!  This is no job for sissies (thanks Wim for putting that word back into my vocabulary).  There are tons of people on bikes and it’s everyone for themselves.  I only almost got hit once by a Dutch girl on a mow-ped. I apologized with my best “I’m sorry I’m a silly tourist” face and she actually glared and growled at me.        !!!!!!

After dinner (delicious pizza) last night, Bonnie and I went through the notorious Red Light  District. (gasp!?)  Yep, that is what I said. 

The RLD has been on my list of: “things-that-have-always-made-me-nervous-in-a-way-that-compromises-my ethics,-morals,-and-innocence,-and-therefore-I-never-intend-to-pursue-but-about-which-I-have-also-always-been-slightly-curious… “

Also on that list?

Las Vegas, the Mob, Spam, Skydiving,  tv show “Perfect Strangers”, Andy Gibbs, cats, Hipsters, Dubai, Swiffers, and voting republican.

Actually the District wasn’t as creepy as I thought.  I think I anticipated some similar feeling to Bourbon Street, New Orleans, circa 1998.  But I have read that the women and men  involved are actually quite organized, protected, and clean. There were a lot of tourists there and some of it seems like it was for show. It’s not for me, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable like I thought I would.  Until Bear asked me if I would take him back there, but that likely won’t happen. It would compromise his gazellig-like character.

For those of you who don’t’ know, its called Red Light because the “shops” in which you can see the women “advertising” all have red-lights over the door-steps as identifiers (as if the scantily clad dame isn’t obvious enough).

Midway through the walk, I wondered if anyone has ever tried independent red-light contracting. 

Like, is it legal for me to just put on my cutest swimsuit, my camping LED headlamp with the red-light setting, and walk around ringing a bell and an aluminum can like the Salvation Army guys at Christmas, or hot-dog vendors at football games?  

HIGHLIGHTS of today and yesterday (sorry again, no pictures)…

-A woman in high-heeled shoes wearing MC Hammer Pants at the Den Haag Centraal train station

-2 cats on a leash.  In different places.  As in, there are 2 or MORE people in Amsterdam who walk their cats on a leash.  I thought I had seen everything.

-A mowped with one woman and 4 little blond dutch 5-year old girls. 

You know there is some little 5-year old boy in rolled up jeans and a ripped white t-shirt on a scooter somewhere in Beckley, West Virginia whose dreams just came true. (no offense to southerners… my family grew up in Beckley  somewhat and I just could picture it fittingly)

-Watching 4 people hoist a futon out of the 4th floor of a window down to the street  (along a canal) using a huge rope… there was quite a scene, including a strange man pillaging the dumpster underneath said suspended futon, completely trusting in the ability of the owners to lower the futon

Additional Commentary:

I have noticed since I got here, as a strong contrast to the Bay Area, how few homeless people there are.  They are not standing outside airports, living under the train tracks (at least not visibly), in the alleyways, busy streets, or the train station yelling at you, talking to themselves, or asking for money. I'm not painting a bad picture or knocking on the homeless, but this is how the scene is in the Bay Area and many other cities in the US and world and a stark contrast from here.  I have been told that the Dutch government takes care of their homeless and through some program, they are able to offer the homeless to something by the way of 600 Euro/month until they can get back on their feet.  I would definitely be interested in learning more about this fact and why the policy here is as such.  I suppose there are pluses and minuses to this approach, but it has a noticeable effect anyway.  

Incidentally, at the Den Haag Centraal Station yesterday, I was approached by the first homeless person since being in Holland and he asked me for money.  Guess where he was from…

The United States.

(yes I gave it to him. I'm a sucker okay?)

Den Haag Hollands Spoor Train Station

My 2 cents…
One struggle here is treating Euro money like real money (which it is of course and even worth more than USD)… but there is a certain part of it all which feels like monopoly play money! Especially the 1 and 2 euro coins!  This is dangerous !!  On the other hand, converting to dollars in my head every time I go to purchase something is sobering and depressing (come on US economy!) .  I am slowly but surely finding a balance.

The last side note of the day??

The people here are incredibly friendly.  Really.  So many people here have gone out of their way to help me even if they didn’t know me, whether was at the train station setting down work on their lap top to walk around with me and find the right platform, walking me to the central station despite being in a hurry, missing work to take me to windmills and flood defence barriers, cooking dinner, coffee…  My greatest appreciations to the people here.   And for you family who worry, I’m being taken care of quite well.

Well thanks for joining me so far… I will try to be more on top of my updating, so you don’t get them all at once like this time.  I am still having a great time and now looking forward to a week of touring this beautiful city. 

OH, and it’s Saturday… so… GO BLUE!  I am of COURSE wearing my Maize and Blue shirt today.

Buh bye then…

Livin' it up down below (sea-level)...

 AMSTERDAM!

On 11 September at 9:30am, I landed in Schipol (to pronounce it, you need to say “shipple as though you were a cat coughing on a hairball). I sat next to a lovely Dutch girl (tall, blonde, cool pants) who was working on her PhD studying organizational psychology! (Also very relevant for some research we’ve been doing).

Incidentally, when I told her the purpose of my trip, she volunteered (without my asking) that most Dutch people DO have a good awareness of floods. She said whenever the storms come, that all of the people get worried. We shall see if this corresponds with the rest of the country.

I had no troubles in getting to Amsterdam save that buying a train ticket in an electronic kiosk in Schipol cost me 8x what it should have because I couldn’t read Dutch, nor did I take notice of the tiny UK flag indicating English translation. Dangit! Well, it was a nice trainride anyway. (see photo below).

I spent my first night in the Stay Okay hostel near Vondelpark and wandered around the Leidseplein (a popular square) to kill of my jetlag and get some food before taking a nap. I love how all the cafes have outdoor seating facing the square so you can people watch and not get called a stalker.

Incidentally, I sat down, ordered myself a Medium sized beer (they have 3 sizes here!)

At some point I fell asleep at the table but woke up in time for both my beer AND the chef’s arrival at which point I ordered a Broodje (sandwich) with “Old dutch cheese”

I didn’t ask how old.


It took me exactly 5 hours to get over jet-lag and I was fine by the time I woke up. So I ate some food.
Eventually I wandered around the canal-lined streets until I was tired. I looked for evidence of floods.  Wondered if people had any idea their engineering works could fail.  I began to wonder about how I would fare not knowing anyone for 2-3 months. But as a small world would have it, I had been in Amsterdam 10 hours and run into someone I knew! My former roommates cousin Hanna used to stay at our house sometimes and she was there visiting her mother so we made plans to wander the town the next day since she had been there a month.

Here are results from our adventure across the tiny city:

BIKES! Everywhere. they have special lanes for bikes like we do in the US, but they are everywhere and there seem to be as many (if not more) bikes than cars.  They also have loads of bike parking (like the yellow sign lit up below)

       

Life-size Chess playing

Canals, houseboats, more bikes

    

We first walked to Dam square to witness the Amsterdam Draaiorgelfestival, or street organ festival.

The one on the right was playing Thriller. It was almost heavenly.

Later on in the day, the street organs had dispersed to various corners at which point, we took this (click below). It’s apparently the norm??

 (yes if you listen closely you can hear me laughing)

I bought my first Dutch cell phone from the most boisterous positive Dutch man ever.  I have never felt so good about an electronics purchase and I was assured by my friends that dutch salespeople aren't trying to pull a fast one on you like they do in the Verizon store.  He kept trying to shoe me away though, but I had more and more questions. you'd think I never had a phone before. Ultimately I made him change my settings to english and I left.  Oh and they gave me a free towel.

Then we went to the beautiful new library/bibliotheek. Sometimes modern architecture isn’t all that appealing to me, but this was incredible. Plus you could eat lunch from the top and the inside and the view were phenomenal.

Later on, I made my way back to the overpriced hostel.  To its credit, the HOSTEL was aware of it's place on the land... see below the elevation profile which was on the wall in the hostel.  Notice all the land below sea... The dijk is on the left, the airport (thats an airplane), then the pink little building is to the right of that.  You can see it is just about 2meters below sea-level.  The elevation is on the left in meters.

Saturday night I ultimately out with some friends of friends (thank you Josh Jackson for putting us in touch) at a place called Gollem. Yes, like Lord of the Rings, where I spent the evening chatting it up with the Greenpeace International Folks. Who knew they are all our age?

HIGHLIGHTS:

Streetperformers breakdancing and pulling off a 4-man “worm” and a 1 minute headspin (that'll teach me to bring my camera from now one)

Trying to order food at a café but learning, “sorry, no food, our chef didn’t show up today”


Walking across the street into a pack of superheroes… Of course this would happen here.

See the happy couple below. I particularly like the purse.

DELFT

Alas, after 2 days in Amsterdam, I came here. Delft is a medieval city with narrow brick canal-lined streets. All below sea-level. There’s an old church (Olde Kerk) and a new church, Niewe Kerk, neither of which I have visited yet, except for drinking a beer in front of them. By myself. I am that shady character.

Canal next to the Olde Kerk.

I came here because the Technical University Delft is where the flood protection and engineering is happening so I have a number of meetings and field trips planned for the research. I am trying to maintain a professional look, but we shall see what happens when I bring my bear out to place on the storm surge barrier for pictures.

This is how close all the cars were parked to the canals.  Thats my shoe.

I think this bicycle has been here a long time.  And that the water has not mixed for quite sometime. That is duckweed, not green carpet.

Canals. You can tell the water levels are very controlled because if you see how close those door "Steps" are to the water, there is not much room for fluctuation.  In talking with people, I don't think this area has flooded for quite some time.

I’m staying at the Soul-Inn... it’s a funky little place, where initially I felt like I paid too much but then I realized that actually, the Dutch just make excellent use of every square inch! So my room is probably 7’ x 7’ but I have a 10 ‘ spiral staircase to my bed which is above everything!

This photo really speaks for itself if you have seen the movie, "Meet the parents"
"Straat" is Dutch word for Street.   :)

PLANNERS you’ll like this:

On my first night I went running and came upon people gathered around a canal in which 4 canal boats were filled with a choir and symphony musicians. It echoed beautifully throughout the streets. A whole bunch was being said in Dutch, but after I conceded I could not understand, I asked the gentleman to my left what was going on.

Apparently after a 5-10 year struggle, the City of Delft had decided to place the Railway (which currently divides the city as in so many cities), underground to reconnect the city. This music festival on the boats, on a canal lined with lumieres was a celebration of the start of the project! Kinda puts our ribbon-cutting-hard-hat-wearing-shovel-ceremonies to shame. There is still opposition but it is going to happen nonetheless.


Okay let's get to the point-- what do you think REALLY goes on here?

I had my first official research meeting yesterday with a researcher/phD student at the university. I will wait to post more comprehensive thoughts on the Dutch Flood protection system until further discussions. But initially here are some major take home messages:

-The Dutch made flood protection a priority because keeping the Netherlands dry and safe (60% of the country is below sea-level) was a level of National interest first and foremost, before economics.

-The key event triggering this policy change was the great floods of 1953 on the North Sea in which more than 1800 people died (similar to Katrina in that right).

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953

-Dutch decide their level of protection (for example, do they protect it for the mini floods, the largest storms, or what? The more protection you have, the more money it costs, right?) based on economic optimization. So they factor in what is at risk throughout the country, see how much VALUE is at risk, and they determine the level of protection based on that.

-RISK= probability of flooding x consequences

-Thus, the most valuable areas (behind which they have the most financially to lose) receive the highest protection. There are parts of the country which have 10,000-year protection, and parts which have 1,250-year protection. Some are even aiming for 100,000-year protection

-For comparison, the United States standard is only 100-year protection.

-For clarification: 100-year protection does NOT mean land is protected for 100 years. It means there is a 1/100 chance of a flood that size to occur any given year. Over the live of a 30-year mortgage, this is actually a 26% chance of a large flood.

- There is no insurance program in the Netherlands the way there is in the US ( we have the National Flood Insurance Program)


- When I asked why not, the response I got was, “because no one can afford to take on that risk”…



NOTES:

-I had maybe the best coffee of my life just yesterday at a café. I don’t know how or why, it just was. Mmmm

-I went running along the canals yesterday and on my way back through, got cheered on by a bench full of Dutch college students. I love that people are sarcastic everywhere.

-In an effort to increase my Dutch vocabulary, I have been reading dutch newspapers. I’m thinking I can fool those around me that I really know what is going on. I do my best from the pictures. But from yesterdays news, Obama loves Prince William and Europeans love Soccer (Voetbal). I’ll be fluent in a week.

-Lastly, please know that Michigan’s win over Notre Dame on Saturday, as well as a buckeye loss to USC, did NOT go unnoticed from the Low Country. What a great way to start a fellowship!


-Bear made the trip well for those of you concerned.

- Bears take a little longer to recover from jetlag due to a change in body chemistry which results from 6 months of  hibernation .

- In Dutch, his name would be Beer.  He is pleased with this translation.  Me and beer will go have some beers (biers).  Oh, beer thinks he is SOOOO funny!

- Beer sends his best. And he says, GO BLUE!!



Until next time.