PalenQ

pthomas -what part of Rhode Island and of Florida do you live in and if so what are folks and cities there doing to guard against seemingly future water problems like Holland is now facing?

Thanks.

PS - I do hope Mira Lago gets flooded and that's all -Trump and cronies have gutted all mention of climate change due to humans (t.e. global warming but some places will see cooling - like perhaps western Europe if the gulf stream get diverted!).

menachem

Cooperating at a purely civic level with the threat of water is deeply ingrained in Dutch culture. So deep that we often don't notice it ourselves. The consensus seeking political culture, expressed in committees and meetings about everything, from multi million euro decisions to the choice of a new coffee maker for the office. Often infuriating to outsiders, all these are born from the need to get everyone in a Water Authority's area on the same page as to spending large sums of money on communal flood defences and land reclamation (often combined).

But also the beauty of practical engineering, a certain aesthetic of the utilitarian, that too has its origin in our "engineering culture": and this can be seen even in today's much praised "Dutch Design".

menachem

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ng-netherlands

ribeirasacra

Some interesting facts after New Orleans
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...terdam/402322/
I hope that the USA do take onboard the Dutch ethics on this subject.

pthomas156

Thank you all so much! What an amazing wealth of information! I can't wait to sit down and read all these links.

To those who wondered: I live in Newport RI in the summer and Miami Beach in the winter. Newport is just now starting to think about how to solve the problem of flooding as the sea rises. Currently, during a full moon (or king) tide, one old colonial neighborhood called The Point has begun to flood; some of the wharves which are full of shops are seeing water in the street. Some of the organizations, like the Preservation Society of Newport County, are hosting talks by sea-rise experts to see what's being done elsewhere. Already, some of the folks who own houses in the Point have moved their furnaces, water heaters, etc. out of the basement and onto the first floor. Recently, some architecture students from the RI School of Design did a project on out-of-the-box ways for The Point to deal with water and held a well-attended exhibition. Some of the ideas involved turning the streets into canals and floating the houses!

Miami Beach is much further along, and city and town officials from up and down the East Coast have been coming to the Beach to check it out. What they're doing is raising the streets of the billion-dollar sandbar 3-4 feet. It's been quite interesting to see. The street our condo is on, 14th, has been raised in the past two years. Where we used to have seven steps to go up to enter the building, we now have one! We had to replant all the palm trees in front higher. But it's working. Our area is quite dry now, even tho the main street our condo is on (West Ave.) won't be raised until this year. The raising goes along with the installation of powerful pumps at the end of some streets to pump the rainwater out into the bay. The mayor thinks this will buy us 50 years to figure out the next step.

massimop

Fascinating. Thanks for elaborating. If you have yet to visit Venice plan a full moon trip between nov & march to see how Venetians cope & there are ways to tour the water-barrier MOSE project.

hetismij2

We already have some floating houses, tethered to a pole so they can rise with the water level.

Also instead of just pumping the rain water away from cities we are now trying to retain it in basins and soakaways. Rainwater from houses goes into the ground and increasingly rainwater from streets is on a separate drainage system to the foul water and goes to reed beds and natural cleansing areas before going into the rivers and of course soaking back into the ground.
By slowing the water flow, as described above, and by de-canalising rivers we are trying to give the rivers room and to retain fresh water rather than have it go straight out to sea and be wasted.

As a delta the rivers are as big a threat as the sea.

pthomas156

Hetismij2, where are the floating houses?

menachem

Amsterdam has some at IJburg, the Steigereiland project

#26 direction IJburg, stop "Steigereiland": if you look towards the water, there they are.

http://static1.persgroep.net/parool/...4266?width=700

ribeirasacra

Woudagemaal has been pumping today. There has been a lot of rain and with more forecasted these lovely steam pumps were brought into action.
The News in Dutch with some great photography and a short video for those who are interest.
http://www.nu.nl/binnenland/4915865/...roverlast.html

menachem

The City of Dordrecht regularly has to deal with flooding. It is protected by the Maeslantkering, way out West near Hook of Holland. But there, shipping traffic has priority, and so the flood doors close there at 3m above NAP, while Dordrecht would keep dry feet at 2m above NAP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFVVoRy8nAo

NAP: Normaal Amsterdams Peil (can be seen in Amsterdam City Hall)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFVVoRy8nAo

menachem

also a great mensa commercial LOL