5/20/25
Today, we had the opportunity to tour the Deltaworks, an amazing feat in engineering. After the floods of 1953, the Dutch people decided to take preventive action and pit the Deltaworks plan into action. The structures consist of a mattress at the sea bed designed to prevent the pillars from shifting. Then, pillars were placed in the water as a base to the flood barriers. Then, moveable doors were placed between these pillars; when there is potential flooding, these doors will be closed to block out floods. Two special-made ships, the Ostrea and the Macoma were used to place the structural parts. Deep pillars were dug into the floor of the water to keep the structure solidly in place, one of these can be seen in the image below.
When the Deltaworks was originally being built, it was planned to entirely close off the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta from the North Sea. While this plan would have been the simplest, it would have came at a large environmental coast. Separating the two sections of water would change the nature of the water (ie. salt, fresh, or brackish), and this would have huge consequences on the organisms who reside in the delta. To prevent this environmental destruction, students and scientists protests, so the government came up with an alternate design with closing doors. The doors would be able to remain open the majority of the time, not changing the salinity of the water. Moreover, doors preserved the tidal shifts, so animals dependent on the tidal shift were not harmed by this construction.
While the Deltaworks was a great solution to protect the Netherlands, issues lie in the future. Due to the nature of climate change, the sea level is rising. If the sea level rises high enough, the structure will interfere with the neighboring ecosystems. Moreover, as the sea level rises, the doors need to be shut more often, causing potential changes to the salinity of the water. Another issue the Deltaworks faces in the future is durability. As the climate changes, and extreme weather events become more common, the structure faces higher rates of degradation, lowering its life span.
All in all, the Deltaworks is an amazing feat of engineering to protect the Netherlands, but it cannot stop the force of climate change.