Dutch barrier damIn 1932, the last opening was sealed completing the 20-mile- (32-km-) long Barrier Dam (Afsluitdijk) in Holland to seal off the Zuyder Zee, a shallow inlet of the North Sea. Work had begun in 1927 on the dam, which was built from the tip of North Holland to the Frisian mainland. It was prompted by disastrous floods in 1916. The work was commissioned by Cornelis Lely (1854-1929), later Minister of Water Management. The dam was built with a width of 300-ft (90 m), at an initial height of 24-ft (7.25 m) above sea-level using primarily boulder clay simply dredged from the bottom of the Zuiderzee. Later, large parts of the Zuyder Zee—renamed Lake IJsselmee—were drained to create 640 sq miles (1650 km²) of new land from two huge polders: the Noordoostpolder and Flevoland.«[Image: The red line is the 20-mile (32 km) dam separating the North Sea (above, dark blue) from the Zuyder Zee (below, light blue and light green). Within the Zuyder Zee are the polders of drained, reclaimed land (light green) the freshwater Lake IJsselmee (light blue). The orange area was proposed as a polder, but was not reclaimed.] |
