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Topic

Water and drought

Water shortage, salinisation, drinking water and the Water Framework Directive.

3 articles, from 15 June 2026 to 19 August 2026

  1. Projects

    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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  2. Policy

    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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  3. Analysis

    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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