1953

Green portions were flooded  (from: de Deltawerken by Hilde de Haan and Ids Haagsma)

Interesting how certain dates or weather patterns will trigger our minds towards the same subject. For example: 9/11 is all I need to say and everyone will know what I’m talking about. Or Katrina, and you all will know I’m talking about the 2005 flood in New Orleans.

1953 is another such trigger, but not for Americans. After Roland had been on vacation in New Orleans and kind of cynically concluded that much of the flooding could either have been contained or construction of subdivisions should not have taken place in certain areas in the first place, he was wondering how the flood in Holland, in 1953 could have been better contained. In other words, Roland kind of presumed that the Dutch were much better at containing the water threats than the Americans. He started with 1953, a date to which every Dutchman can relate, either from experience or the history books in school if he or she did not exist yet in 1953.

Roland himself was about eight years old when that flood on February 1, 1953 took place, but he did not live in Holland at that time. His family had just moved to Venezuela, where his dad was assigned to help direct making Heineken beer. When his family heard about the flood, it was dramatic, but Roland could not exactly visualize it.

After returning to Holland where Roland finished high school and got his engineering degree in water management, specifically about dam construction, he got a better idea about that fateful February 1, 1953 flood. After his vacation to New Orleans recently, he realized that he could relate much better to the 1953 flood, because it was in the country where he was born and raised part of his life; maybe a bit prejudiced? 

New Orleans is also at the mouth of a delta, the Mississippi, just as most of Holland forms the delta of the Rhine and Maas rivers. Roland knew the history of this Dutch delta from his school days. That history goes back to the 1200’s. Since then, documentation about water management had become pretty good. The urgency to maintain control of water is much higher in Holland than around the Mississippi river, because without the dikes and dunes 50% of the country would be under water. Amsterdam would not even exist. Rotterdam would never have been the largest harbor in the world between 1964-2004. About 65% of the Dutch population lives in that below-sea-level area of the country.

Much of the flooded area from Katrina was inhabited for a large part by the poorer black population and only involved a small % of the state. Roland realized that floods were not just a matter of engineering to prevent or manage them, but included political, historical, economic, and cultural issues as well. 
 

No dikes, no Amsterdam

About half of Holland lies below the sea level. Cities like Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Volendam, and many more would not exist. That is where more than half of the Dutch population lives!

Rotterdam served as the largest port in the world for 42-years between 1962 and 2004 before it was surpassed by Singapore and Shanghai, in that order. The Rotterdam port is the largest port in the whole of Europe. (AUGUST 11, 2011 BY MI NEWS NETWORK)

After Roland returned from New Orleans, he was determined to go back in history and see how the Dutch fared all those years. Since 1200, the documentation about flooding became more reliable. Every history book mentions the St Elizabeth flood of Nov.18-19, 1421 which formed the Biesbosch; a miriad of water flows among the little islands formed where the Rhine and Maas rivers come together before it all flows out to sea. More floods followed in 1530, 1570, 1574 when dikes were purposely broken to keep the Spaniards from reaching Leiden. In 1775 another one, which created describing meteorological factors in connection with the flood. Others in 1808, 1825, 1894, 1906, 1916, 1944 when Walcheren was bombarded, and the latest flood in 1953.

(from: of Dikes and Windmills, by Peter Spier)

Roland finally got the whole story together about the moon and its correlation to the tides. He knew the basics but did not realize the total effect it had on the Dutch fight against the water. Every 24 hours and 50 minutes the sea level rises and recedes twice into high tide and low tide. This is influenced by the magnetic force of the sun, but even more so by that of the moon. This is the strongest with full moon and new moon, when the sun and the moon are in alignment, and pull simultaneously so high tide is extremely high. That is why there is an extreme high tide and extreme low tide every 14 days. Even the tide differences vary by location. Thus the difference between high tide and low tide in the South-West can be as much as 9 ft., while in the North (Den Helder) it is only 3 ft. It all depends on how much “space” / how deep it is, for water to go. Also the wind can influence the water levels independent from the tides. A Wester storm can really make the water go higher and an East wind will do the opposite.

And that is what happened that fateful day of February 1, 1953!

Roland was almost 9 years old, then, and had left Holland with his family to live in Venezuela, so age plus distance made it difficult for him to visualize the extend of damage done. It was not until the 1970’s when Roland became part of the solution as an engineer fresh out of college, assisting with the Delta Plan to strengthen the dam and dike system in Zeeland and Zuid-Holland provinces, that he started to see the effect. 


Pisek, Czech Republic and Folsom Lake, California

   In Pisek, I would take walks around town. Each time was a joy, even if it was the same route as previous. I would go down to the river from our apartment on Velké Námēstí and turn along the  Otava river, just before the old bridge; the oldest stone bridge in Czech, and walk along the river on one side and the castle wall on the other side. At the end I would run into the electric generator building.


Písek was the first town in the Czech lands to have permanent electric street lighting. It was installed by the Czech electrotechnician, František Křižík, on 23 June, 1887, who lit several arc lamps in the town centre. A year later, the street lighting was extended and the provisional traction engine drive was replaced with a power plant (the first in the Czech lands) built by the citizens in an old watermill on the Otava River. Dynamos for power production were first driven by a waterwheel, which was replaced with two Francis turbines in 1901. These turbines were reconstructed in 1994, old technical equipment was brought back into operation, and the power plant now generates electricity again. In 1997, a small museum dedicated to street lighting in Písek was opened here, documenting the history of power generation in Písek and showing old power generation equipment in operation. (Official portal of the town of Pisek)

    František Křižík was a contemporary of Thomas Edison and competed with him as to who would first invent the light bulb. November 1879, Edison officially patented his light bulb. 

     The opening on the left is a little tunnel which gets you to the other side of the mill. As you come out on the other side you can hear the humming of the belt which drives the generator via the turbines.

This picture is taken from the opposite side of the river. You can barely see the “dam” in front, built to redirect the water to the opposite side of the river, to feed the power plant. 

  All throughout South-West Czech, towns by rivers have these power plants. So, what does that have to do with Folsom Lake? Why didn’t they build a higher dam in Pisek?
The land behind Pisek is pretty flat, so there is no way taller dams are possible, but by each town having its own power plant every bit of water flowing down-stream can be used. Folsom Lake is not that different, other than that it is bigger, but water still has to flow through the turbines to generate electricity.

On this picture you can see how the water is funneled into the power plant on the upper part of the river.

Compare this to Folsom Lake (1955) north of Sacramento, California. It is a much higher dam, but very dependent on precipitation which has been lacking for the last four years. It performs the same function: generating electricity for Sacramento. Because of the elevation difference, the dam could be built higher. Besides electricity, adequate amounts of water are released to keep salt water from the San Fransisco Bay to seep inland into the delta, when it is high tide. It also provides water for Sacramento. Now the lake is almost empty.


A full lake on the top, and how it looks now (November 2015) below, after 4 years of drought.

Hundreds of people headed out to Folsom Lake to see ruins from the old Mormon Island settlement.

Mormon Island thrived during mining years with as many as 2,500 people, complete with four hotels, a school and seven saloons, according to some historical accounts.

According to the California Department of Water Resources, Folsom Lake has about 168,000 acre feet (1 acre foot = 1,233 cubic meter (m³)) at the moment, about 17 percent of capacity and only about a third of the typical average storage of 502,146 acre feet. A year ago, the reservoir had just under 556,000 acre feet stored.  Brian Hickey/KCRA

The Dead Sea

Our Dutch engineer, who visited New Orleans, has a name: Roland Winter. Roland got his engineering degree from Delft University in Holland. Delft University is very well known and respected in Europe and really all over the world. It is an engineering school with numerous venues of study. Water management is probably one of the most prominent areas, and that is what Roland did. His study had to do with dike construction. After his studies, he worked with the Delta werken team for a year or so. The Delta Works (in English) project jumped out after the 1953 flood in South-Western Holland. The ideas were not new, but that flood sped up the process. Basically, instead of strengthening every dike around each island of the provinces Zeeland and Zuid Holland, the islands were connected with dams on the ocean side, and the water behind those dams, controlled.


Then Roland joined an engineering company, which dealt with dike and dam construction. He was involved in various projects but a big project on the Dead Sea in Israel became his long-term responsibility. The Dead Sea has a very high salt concentration, but also is rich in potassium, which is used primarily in fertilizers. To win salt, was not economical. That is more economical in places like the San Fransisco Bay, where you can see the salt beckons from the air, as the plane approaches San Fransisco airport.

"A process is proposed for the recovery of potassium from brines by precipitation as potassium perchlorate, followed by conversion to potassium chloride by liquid anion exchange with a tertiary amine in the form of its hydrochloride. Regeneration of the amine salt is effected by means of lime and hydrochloric acid. The process was tested on Dead Sea brine, containing 13 g/l KCl. Precipitation at 30 °C gave a 40% yield of potassium, cooling to 0 °C increased the yield to over 80%. The anion exchanger used was the hydrochloride of trioctylamine dissolved in toluene; this performed satisfactorily and phase separation was easy. A separation factor of 130 was obtained for the ClO4−/Cl− separation. Regeneration of the amine was tested with various bases."  (The recovery of potassium chloride from Dead Sea brines by precipitation and solvent extraction   J.A Epstein,  D Altaras, E.M Feist, J Rosenzweig   Copyright © 1975 Published by Elsevier B.V.)

In Israel, the salt beckons are just that, but the process of extracting potassium is attractive. So, what to do with the salt? It is just left after the water, that is pumped into the beckons, evaporates. This means that the dikes around the beckons need to be raised every 7-8 years, and that was Roland’s job to design how much higher they should become. Also, because the Dead Sea level is lowering, the water got further and further away from the pumps, so they had to be relocated closer to the water. That also was Roland’s responsibility to figure out for the contractors. Every 4-5 years Roland would go down to Israel for a month or so to evaluate the situation, take the measurements, then redesign the new dike elevation. He did this for his whole career, besides smaller projects in between.

Delta’s: how they influence lives and culture



A Dutch engineer visited New Orleans on a vacation. Being involved with water projects in Holland and Israel, he was curious how people in and around New Orleans had dealt with “hurricane Katrina” and the consequences.

Early in the morning on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States. When the storm made landfall, it had a Category 3 rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale–it brought sustained winds of 100–140 miles per hour–and stretched some 400 miles across. The storm itself did a great deal of damage, but its aftermath was catastrophic. Levee breaches led to massive flooding, and many people charged that the federal government was slow to meet the needs of the people affected by the storm. Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes, and experts estimate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage.

New Orleans was at particular risk. Though about half the city actually lies above sea level, its average elevation is about six feet below sea level–and it is completely surrounded by water. Over the course of the 20th century, the Army Corps of Engineers had built a system of levees and seawalls to keep the city from flooding. The levees along the Mississippi River were strong and sturdy, but the ones built to hold back Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne and the waterlogged swamps and marshes to the city’s east and west were much less reliable. Even before the storm, officials worried that those levees, jerry-built atop sandy, porous, erodible soil, might not withstand a massive storm surge. Neighborhoods that sat below sea level, many of which housed the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, were at great risk of flooding.  (from: HISTORY article, "New Orleans after 10 years.")

The Dutch engineer traveled the area, observing the dikes, dams, and water management projects in the area. He noticed that a lot of the damage could have been prevented, and a bit of his Dutch pride about how water management is handled different in Holland, kicked in. After all, Holland was also a delta of the Rhine and Maas rivers! He wondered why a lot of houses were built in marginally protected areas of the delta. He wondered if technology about water management was more advanced in Holland.
Did You Know?
During the past century, hurricanes have flooded New Orleans six times: in 1915, 1940, 1947, 1965, 1969 and 2005.


       Our Dutch engineer became more interested in the “why’s” of flooding, because he realized that American and Dutch technologically about water management were not that different. Engineers in both countries have a good idea of the conditions and risks that exist at any time. Didn’t they manage to not have such a high density populated, or expensive businesses, in flood prone areas in Holland? He would try to find that out after his return to Holland, from vacation.


  DO YOU THINK THAT MUCH OF THE DAMAGE FROM HURRICANE KATRINA COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER CONTAINED?