Delta Works: An Example for the Rest of Us

hello everybody welcome back to mega-projects I'm your host Simon Whistler just where we get started this one it's all about this outers a and the Delta Works which in the Netherlands where they speak Dutch there are a lot of pronunciations which I'm probably going to struggle with which I'm probably going to get destroyed in the comments for apologies ahead of time my Dutch friends I've got my pronunciation dictionary right there and I am doing my best [Music] Holland's the homes are windmills clogs and the kind of cafes we're not necessarily looking for a coffee is also home to one of the seven wonders of the modern world according to the American Society of Civil Engineers don't worry if you've missed this one because many do but what has been constructed over nearly a hundred years in Holland is simply astonishing this is not a mega project about prestige glory and records no this is something far more importance it's a mega project that has reimagined our fight against climate change and one that is likely to save countless lives it's a project known simply as Delta Works around the world today there's this steadily increasing fear of rising sea levels but the Dutch they're well ahead of the game the Delta Works is the largest flood protection system anywhere in the world comprising dams storm barriers dikes and levees across the Rhine use shelter Delta region this is an area of outstanding beauty but also one of death and destruction when those waters rise now while we are going to focus on the Delta works we're also going to slip in a bonus mega project as well and that's the zoo Ozzy works if you've never heard of the Delta Works chances are you won't know this one either but it's your lucky day to mega-projects price of one and that price is free because you're watching this on YouTube thank you for watching yet while the threat of rising sea levels will affect millions around the world certain places fall into a critical category these sites that are both low-lying and heavily populated faced enormous challenges relating to climate change it's estimated that by 2050 517 coastal cities around the world will be threatened by sea level rise of at least point five meters that's one point six feet putting 800 million people at risk places like New Orleans New York Mumbai and Osaka are in particular danger but likewise so is the northern coastal area of Holland the predicted effects of climate change and rising sea levels should be apocalyptic enough that everybody is scrambling to ensure these major population hubs are safe but of Cour this isn't happening political and financial hurdles are constantly obstructing changes that are needed right now let alone in 30 years time the Delta Works is not simply one project along the northern region of Holland 13 major projects along with countless small additions such as sluices locks dikes and levees were constructed or improved upon between 1954 and 1997 but despite the initial construction having been completed this is a project this will probably never be finished because the effects of climate change are ongoing Holland's a delightful country but it has one significant problem 20% of the country's land mass lies below the average sea level with 50% being one meter or less above it including some of its most populated areas humans we have a bit of a habit of building in dangerous locations and it's wonderful to have a sea view or a picturesque image of a meandering river and yes having that imposing volcano outside your house provides a wonderful backdrop but around the worlds we are becoming increasingly aware that we have built enormous cities in perilous places the tragic flooding in and around New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2003 gave us a brief glimpse of just how bad things can be even in the richest country in the world in 1953 one of the worst floods in living memory swept through the North Sea across Holland Belgium and the United Kingdom a total of 2551 people lost their lives 1836 of these in Holland alone the impacts on farming and livestock was also catastrophic but the most harrowing thing was that scientists agreed it could have been so much worse their response was actually Swift the Dutch government quickly authorized a study to assess their flood defences an old plan known as Delta plan first conceived in the 20s and 30s was quickly revived and scientists and engineers set about providing a long-term plan to minimize the future risk in coastal areas what emerged was a plan to drastically reduce the length of dikes exposed to the sea by 430 miles or 700 kilometers this would be done with a series of dams storm barriers that will effectively create a shield around the Delta okay we're gonna jump back in time quickly because before we even come to the Delta works we have to look at the Zelda Z works first this in itself was a vast project began in 1920 and finished in 1975 the name was another ones the alternative used for holland literally means lowlands and the name is incredibly accurate as we previously discussed this particular area of Holland here is a patchwork of rivers inlets bays and canals just imagine Venice but on a much much bigger scale the Zelda's day was a large shallow Bay on the North Sea which stretched around 60 miles 100 kilometers inland this was a great source of fishing and by all accounts a marvelous place to spend a lazy weekend with the family however it was also murderous during the most serious storms the dykes on the sodas a would regularly fail flooding the area nearby in 1421 a broken seawall resulted in the deaths of ten thousand people in small villages around the zone as a plans to seal off the bay had appeared in the 17th century but it wasn't until the early 20th century the technology had caught up with the theory however it wasn't just water safety that the Dutch were concerned with their very land was disappearing beneath them between 1200 and 1980 the Dutch reclaimed nine hundred and forty thousand acres of land from the sea and three hundred and forty five thousand acres by draining lakes total of one point two eight five million acres pretty good I hear you say but when you consider that they lost 1.4 million acres of land to the zoda's eh in that time they begin to understand the scale of the problem Holland's was quite simply disappearing as early as 1667 the Dutch had mused about potentially damning or draining the zuiderzee as a way to control flooding but also to reclaim the land that was quickly being lost [Music] in 1916 yet another fierce storm tore through the area killing 19 people as they say this was the straw that broke the camel's back on the 14th of June 1918 the zuiderzee Act was passed into law composed of three key objectives one protecting the area from the effects of the North Sea to increasing the food supply and cultivating new agricultural lands and three improving water management's by creating a freshwater lake instead of the saltwater Bay before it the first step of this project was the aft sladac enclosed dam stretching 20 miles 32 kilometers from den over on Waring gong to zurich in Friesland and completed between 1927 and 1932 in total 23 million cubic metres of sand and 13.5 million cubic metres of till were used in construction and between 4,000 and 5,000 people were employed alleviating at least some of the high unemployment felt during the Great Depression today the dam would have cost the equivalent of around 700 million euros and it also created a brand-new lake the process of reclaiming lands as you might expect is not particularly easy the areas of reclaimed lands were known as polders and these were created by damming off a portion of the new lake then pumping out the water while only partial areas were fully completed by the time the Nazis invaded in 1940 these polders did supply excellent hiding locations for the Dutch underground resistance during the occupation after the war things began to really take off concentrating on the flavor lands area a colossal undertaking of around 621 miles that's a thousand square kilometres water was drained using pumping stations that pumped the water out into the open sea a process that took between six months and a year on the earliest polders once the majority of the water had been removed small ditches and canals were dug to suck out the remaining water I know that might sound a little strange but that was what was essentially happening the ground needed to be dehydrated before it could be used for anything else a process that caused the land to sink by about one meter once this had been done Reed plants were sown by dropping seeds from low-flying aeroplanes these are not only strong sturdy plants but they worked well to drain the remaining water while providing much-needed air to the grounds there are now four inhabited polders with a fifth in the planning that will be used as a nature reserve while agricultural land has been the major beneficiary numerous towns and villages have also sprung up within the polders the largest of which ll a start now has a population of just under 80 thousand not bad since it was only established in 1967 and ten years before that area was completely underwater the last polder was also finished in 1967 and drains the following year bringing the total reclaimed land to a whopping 1025 square miles that's 1,650 square kilometres now of course this means that the zoda's a works and the Delta Works overlapped with each other which only adds to the scale of the entire undertaking the first stage of this mammoth project known as Delta works began in 1954 with the building of the I apologize again Dutch people storm flood cursing Holland sir ISIL flood barrier near crimp-on and esel an area that had been partially affected during the 1953 flat even with my pronunciation dictionary Dutch is very difficult and it is no exaggeration to say that for the next 47 years construction didn't cease when we see how little political motivation there is around the world to implement major improvements like this it's unbelievable that the Dutch governments and the Dutch people had the stamina and perseverance to complete it all now as much as I'd love to take you on a long tour of all the projects I hear some of you may start dropping off so let's just focus on two of them the Ulster shared a caring is the big boy of the Delta works in its most iconic sight the five point six mile nine kilometer dam stretching from the island of show and Overland's and Nord babylons was not only the largest addition to the project but also the most expensive at 2.8 billion euros originally it had been designed as a closed dam that public pressure regarding how it would affect marine life in the area led to an alteration meaning that 2.5 miles 4 kilometers of the dam now has smooth escapes that are usually kept open the dam is formed of 65 concrete pillars each between 35 and 38 point 7 5 meters high that's 115 to 127 feet and they weigh 18,000 tons in between these pillars are enormous metal doors that can be opened and closed depending on weather conditions now when I say open enclosed it's not quite as easy as a front door these are 42 meters wide and they take about an hour to close on the fourth of October 1986 Queen Beatrix officially opens the dam and uttered the words now well known in Holland something in Dutch which I'm not even gonna try but in English it's the flood barrier is closed the Delta works are completed zealand is safe the dam has its own electronic security system so there shouldn't be any kind of human error according to dodge floor water levels must be three metres above the regular sea level for the doors of the dam to be completely closed since its opening this has occurred 27 times the last of which happened on the 10th of February 2020 when storm sharra rumbled through the area it now has a yearly running cost of around 17 million euros which is a snip commanded the cost of flood damage that we've seen around the world [Music] the second project we're going to look at is very different Mar slant carrying is a storm surge barrier and is currently one of the largest moving structures on earth as I mentioned earlier there are now significant population centers around the world that are at high risk of rising sea levels Rotterdam with its population of 650,000 inhabitants and lying exactly zero metres above sea level is just such a place initial plans for this area were to reinforce existing dikes however by the 1980s it became clear that not only would it take the best part of 30 years to complete but it would also involve destroying parts of historic Rotterdam a new idea was needed at the time Rotterdam was the busiest port in the world so to keep shipping lanes open whatever was built across the waterway would need to be moveable what we see today are two floating gates on either bank each with a 22 meter high 72 feet and 210 meters 689 feet long steel gate each gate then has a set of steel trusses that extend further back in a v-shape and act as beams to support and strengthen the whole structure they are designed in such a way that all of the pressure from the water is transferred to a single joint at the rear which acts like a ball and socket joint very similar to what we have in the human hip but these are no normal mechanical joints they are the largest joints in the world with the diameter of 10 meters 38 feet and a weight of 680 tonnes on the 10th of May 1997 May slanty ring was opened again by Queen Beatrix in normal operation the arms which each weighs six thousand eight hundred tons remain in their dry docks on lands but when needed they begin to move across the water towards each other when the gates are 1.5 meters five feet apart they are filled with water and slowly submerged the bottom of the waterway where they are finally connected creating virtually watertight protection all of the decision making here is done so using computer systems and algorithms just in case you're interested is two hundred thousand lines of code for the operational system and another 250 thousand for the simulation systems like the previous construction we mentioned this one have initially been programmed to initiate three operations when a three meter 9.8 feet rise or above was predicted however for testing purposes that was lowered to 2.6 meters a point five feet it is expected to be needed once every 10 years with their number rising to five times a year by 2050 in the first 10 years of operation the Marcin and carrying did not need to be closed once but on the 8th of November 2007 alarm bells began ringing across the region for the first time the colossal Delta Works protection system world into full operation with all the storm barriers and dams closing together to protect the Dutch coast and it totally worked the zelda's and Delta Works are extraordinary on so many levels quite simply nowhere else on earth has there ever been a flood protection system like it the Dutch worked painstakingly from 1927 to 2010 when finally small additions were completed to better protect their country from the danger of the sea but this is just the start the Dutch government has assessed that the country must plan for a 1.3 meter rise in the North Sea by 2100 and 4 meters by 2200 the soidiers a and Delta Works are merely the beginning of a satanic struggle ahead they will need to be improved raised and replaced as the water continues to rise for hundreds of years the Delta Works cost in the region of five billion euros but by 2012 it was thought that with additions it may well have pushed up to just below 10 billion euros the government estimates that a further 100 billion euros will be needed during the current century to fight the steadily increasing battle these two projects undertaken by the Dutch deserve far more recognition than they currently receive but we live in a world of short-termism we build glorious monuments of human achievements but frankly who cares how tall we can build or how fast we can travel through the skies when vast swathes of our world will be underwater what the Dutch have built most likely won't work for everybody but they have set a precedence that we should all be following maybe by 2050 what has happened in Holland will be the envy of the world so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did smash that thumbs up button below also please do subscribe this mega projects channel is pretty new and your subscription really does make a difference so that subscription button as well and thank you for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 486,436

Rating: 4.9231243 out of 5

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Id: I79CQUTO5II

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Roller95]

Simon Whistler is te zien op zoveel Youtube kanalen, echt bizar.

[u/DashingDino]

Zegt hij nou dat mensen vooral langs kustlijnen en rivieren zijn gaan wonen vanwege het uitzicht? Het heeft veel meer te maken met: Toegang tot de zee, visserij, handel, zoet water om te drinken en voor landbouw, en in warme landen vanwege het gunstiger klimaat.

[u/orangekid92]

Almere is alleen wel een stuk groter dan Lelystad. 200k+ inwoners. Beetje jammer dat mn stad geen shoutout kreeg.