Cities around the globe are eagerly importing a Dutch speciality—flood prevention
By Jim Morrison
Like the Netherlands, portions of Norfolk have arisen on wetlands and even creeks buried beneath fill. And similar to the Netherlands, where two-thirds of the country is vulnerable to flooding, Norfolk is threatened by rising tides and intensified storms.
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So the city imported expertise, staging the Dutch Dialogues, a traveling roadshow that is a cross between a seminar on local hydrology and a design charrette. The dialogues, initiated by Waggonner & Ball Architects, a New Orleans firm, and the Royal Dutch Embassy, are just one example of how a world increasingly imperiled by water is turning for guidance to a country where there is no retreat from rising seas.
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For the Dutch, consulting with cities about their response to relative sea-level rise has become a growth industry. They're the Silicon Valley of water management, a laboratory testing strategies that have evolved over the centuries. No wonder. Water has been both a daily threat and a national identity for a country about the size of Maryland. More than half the nation's 17 million people live on land below sea level. The Netherlands takes exporting water knowledge so seriously that it has a Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Henk Ovink, who travels the globe on behalf of Dutch experts.
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But over time—and after a series of floods in 1993 and 1995—the Dutch realized raising a fortress against the inevitable invasion of water wasn't a solution. So they moved on to focusing on water systems and ways to store the water from flooding or slow its discharge into rivers. The country created a Room for the River program to give rivers more space to flood. Next, they began working with nature, letting the water in and creating lakes, garages and parks that transform into emergency reservoirs during flooding.
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