Water and drought
Water shortage, salinisation, drinking water and the Water Framework Directive.
- Projects
Bridges yes, lock widening no: what the reprioritisation means for Kornwerderzand
The Dutch cabinet has put the widening of the lock at Kornwerderzand low on its priority list, but will renew the bridges so that a wider lock remains possible later. That gives the region the disruption of preparation without the certainty of the result. A report on a project that has hung between two outcomes since 2020.
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What goes under the A2 in Limburg: how a construction material became the stakeholder issue of a motorway widening
For the widening of the A2 between Het Vonderen and Kerensheide, Boskalis wants to use hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Beaumix, a material made from washed incinerator bottom ash. On 25 September the Limburg Provincial Council removed the transitional rule that would still have allowed its use in the groundwater protection zone near Roosteren. A report on a project where the debate is not about the route, but about what goes into the ground.
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Pumps at the West Lock: drought turns the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal into a distribution problem
On 18 August, Rijkswaterstaat installed pumps at the West Lock in Terneuzen that can push saline Westerschelde water into the canal to protect its banks. A report on a waterway where water level, salinity, shipping and industry collide, across a national border.
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After nitrogen comes the Water Framework Directive: two deadlines, one stakeholder challenge
Everyone in the infrastructure sector knows the nitrogen clock. A second compliance clock is now ticking louder: the EU Water Framework Directive with its 2027 deadline. A comparison of two legal regimes, and what the first teaches us about the second.
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Drinking water is becoming the next grid congestion, and the sector treats it as a permitting problem
All ten Dutch drinking water companies need extra extraction capacity before 2030, but new sources are not materialising. The sector points to slow permitting. We argue: the real bottleneck is the absence of stakeholder and environmental management around the extraction sites.
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