For Amsterdam, a city built two meters below sea level, climate change presents a particularly acute challenge. A whole network of dykes, dams, locks and pumping stations has so far allowed the city to develop. “But even the best-designed flood control system has its limits,” highlighted Bloomberg. However, in Amsterdam as elsewhere, the sea is rising faster than expected… This is enough to raise some concerns for the future of the capital of the Netherlands when it is facing a demographic boom and housing is already sorely lacking.
According to Maarten Ouboter, hydrologist at the regional water company Waternet, the whole Amsterdam region is increasingly at risk from flooding and the current protection systems, which engineers are constantly trying to improve, may no longer be in a good state. to face beyond 2050.
Meanwhile, increasingly heavy rains will test the city’s sewage system, built between 1872 and 1987 to collect both sewage and rainwater, warns Maarten Ouboter. “All the water that comes into the network must be pumped out immediately. We don’t have a storage system. Rebuilding the entire sewer system would cost billions. The city must imperatively find a solution.”
“The party is over ! ”
In the meantime, it is the development of new districts, such as that of the Eastern Docklands, a former port area located between the IJ and the Nieuwe Vaart, which undoubtedly needs to be reviewed. Impossible, in fact, to continue to build housing on artificial islands which would have the effect of accentuating the rising waters. “Somehow the party is over in Amsterdam”, admits urban planner Zef Hemel.
“We’re going to have to watch the water level very closely to build buildings that have a chance of still standing in a hundred or two hundred years, completes Maarten Ouboter. Choices will have to be made taking into account the long term. In terms of financing, it is very difficult because the investments are calculated over much shorter periods.”
This will no doubt greatly complicate the task of the municipality. Noting that it had become very difficult to find accommodation in Amsterdam, “unless one is rich”, Femke Halsema, the mayor, pledged last summer to solve the housing crisis by rapidly building 70,000 additional homes.