Pumps at the West Lock: drought turns the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal into a distribution problem

On Tuesday 18 August 2026, pumps were standing on the grounds of the West Lock in Terneuzen. They were doing nothing. They had been placed there for one contingency: if the water level in the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal drops further, they can move water from the Westerschelde estuary into the canal, roughly 3.5 cubic metres per second in total. Not to get shipping moving again, and certainly not to make the canal less salty. Their purpose is to prevent damage to the banks of one of the busiest industrial waterways in north-west Europe if the level falls too far.

That captures the situation on this canal in the summer of 2026: almost every measure that relieves one problem makes another one worse.

A canal fed from two directions

The Ghent-Terneuzen Canal connects the port of Ghent to the Westerschelde through Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. It is not a river: it has no catchment of its own to fill it with fresh water. Almost all of its fresh water arrives from Flanders, through the supply at Evergem. At the other end, at Terneuzen, three sea locks connect the canal to a saline estuary. Every lockage lets salt water in.

In a normal year the two balance out. Fresh water pushing up from the south drives the salt entering through the locks back towards the sea, and the chloride concentration stays close to the target value of 3,000 milligrams per litre. When that supply falls away, the balance shifts: salt water penetrates further towards Ghent and the canal level drops.

That is precisely what happened this summer. Where chloride concentrations were around 8,000 to 8,500 milligrams per litre in early July, almost 9,900 milligrams per litre was measured in August. More than three times the target. The canal level hovered around 15 centimetres below its target level.

The national drought, and why it is only half the story here

Since mid-July 2026 the Netherlands has been at level 2 of its national escalation ladder: actual water shortage. Rhine discharge at Lobith fell in early August to just above 600 cubic metres per second, the lowest value for this time of year in a measurement series going back to 1901. The national water distribution committee is applying the statutory priority sequence for water allocation, regional water authorities have imposed abstraction bans, and inland shipping across the country is sailing with reduced draught.

For practitioners it is tempting to read the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal as one more chapter in that national story. That is only half right. This canal does not depend on the Rhine or on the IJsselmeer. It depends on a supply managed on the other side of a national border, in a region that is itself dry. The Dutch priority sequence does not determine how much water enters the canal at Evergem. That makes the trade-off here fundamentally different from a Dutch main watercourse: the most important dial is not on your own control panel.

What the locks reveal

The most visible intervention for local stakeholders is at the locks. To let in as little salt as possible and to preserve the water level, lockages now take place only during favourable parts of the tidal cycle. Those windows narrowed over the summer: the New Lock and the East Lock operate for a limited number of hours around low water, and the West Lock has been fully closed since 18:30 on Thursday 13 August. Maximum draught on the canal was reduced to just over twelve metres, which prevents seagoing vessels from sailing fully loaded.

For the port this means fewer lockages, longer waiting times, and cargo that has to be handled elsewhere. North Sea Port, the cross-border port authority covering Ghent, Terneuzen and Vlissingen, has maintained a rolling update for customers since early July, listing the current lockage windows, draught limits and salinity readings by date, along with the advice to build flexibility into logistics planning.

That is more than a service bulletin. In practice it is the most important stakeholder instrument in this case: a shared, frequently updated factual baseline on which Dutch and Flemish water managers, terminals, shipping lines and factories all base their own decisions. Those who have no influence over the measure are at least entitled to predictability about its consequences.

Pumping salt water is not a solution, but it is a choice

The pumps at the West Lock make the logic of this case uncomfortably clear. The water they would move comes from the Westerschelde and is saline. Rijkswaterstaat is open about this: using the pumps does little for the salinity in the canal, which is already high because of the drought. The pumps serve a different purpose, namely preventing the level from dropping so far that the canal banks become unstable.

On 18 August they stood ready without running. The level is being monitored jointly with the Flemish water authorities, and the pumps can be deployed immediately if needed.

In stakeholder terms this is a classic situation in which an authority prepares a measure that is essential for one party and a deterioration for another. Anyone abstracting process or cooling water along the canal mainly sees additional salt. Anyone responsible for the structural condition of the banks mainly sees risk going down. Both are right. The only way through is to be explicit about which interest takes precedence at which moment and why, rather than presenting the measure as a neutral technical act.

Who is standing along this canal

The stakeholder map is unusually dense for a waterway of roughly thirty kilometres.

Industry. Dozens of plants along the canal abstract water for their processes and for cooling. High salinity means corrosion in pipework and cooling towers and additional pre-treatment costs. Steel producer ArcelorMittal in Ghent has already invested in a desalination plant.

Shipping and the port. Reduced draught and narrower lockage windows affect the reliability of the entire Ghent-Terneuzen corridor, in a port that built the New Lock precisely to serve larger vessels.

Agriculture. On the Flemish side, abstraction bans in the Meetjesland and Waasland areas have been a recurring feature of dry summers. Saline irrigation water is unusable for many crops.

Nature. Salinisation of the canal and its adjoining watercourses has ecological consequences, from aquatic communities to species in the bank zones.

What these groups have in common is that none of them controls a dial. All four depend on decisions taken by two governments in two countries, in a system where lock operation and fresh water supply do not sit with the same party.

The lock that made the problem bigger

There is an uncomfortable dimension to this case that is rarely stated out loud. The New Lock at Terneuzen, 427 metres long, 55 metres wide and 16.44 metres deep and in full service since 1 August 2025, is one of the largest locks in the world and was built precisely to improve access to the canal zone. But a larger chamber also means more salt water exchanged per lockage. The Flemish-Dutch Scheldt Commission anticipated this: with the new lock and growing traffic, modelling indicates that a fresh water supply of around 13 cubic metres per second is needed to keep the canal within its standards.

That is not a design flaw, but it is an example of a challenge that only becomes fully visible after delivery. Accessibility has improved, water quality has become more vulnerable, and the compensating measures lag behind the lock they are meant to compensate for.

For that reason, operational management focuses on smarter lockages: grouping vessels so that the gates need to open less often, supported by a decision support system for the canal zone that helps lock operators choose which chamber to use at which moment.

What is on the table structurally

The Flemish-Dutch Scheldt Commission had a working group develop several scenarios. The package that emerged centres on disconnecting the Moervaart from the canal system, with a lock, a weir and a fish passage, estimated at around 34 million euro. A permanent pumping installation at the sea lock and additional desalination at industrial sites are also being studied. Without measures, the commission estimates economic damage over the coming century at around half a billion euro, mainly because the locks would increasingly have to stay closed to limit further salinisation.

Those figures come with a stakeholder challenge that starts now. Disconnecting the Moervaart affects shipping on that waterway, water management in the hinterland and ecology. A permanent pumping installation that admits salt water requires research into corrosion and ecological effects before anything is permittable. And the lead time from study to working facility runs to years or more than a decade, while the summers in which things go wrong are arriving faster than that.

Where things stand

As of mid-August 2026 the picture is this: a national actual water shortage that the national coordination body says could persist for months, a canal more than three times as saline as its target value, a fully closed West Lock, restricted lockage windows at the two other chambers, reduced draught, and pumps standing ready to admit salt water if the banks require it.

This case is instructive for three reasons. First, it shows that scarcity cannot be solved by engineering alone: when there is too little fresh water, all that remains is allocation. Second, it shows what happens when the decisive dial sits outside your own jurisdiction, and how valuable a joint, public factual baseline becomes in that situation. Third, it shows that a project delivered according to plan can leave behind a challenge that was not fully visible at the time of the decision.

The pumps at the West Lock will stay for now. Whether they run this summer depends on rain that has so far failed to arrive.