Last summer the Mississippi River and many of its tributaries flooded for months, causing more than $20 billion dollars in damage. Climate change is bringing more heavy and frequent rainstorms, a threat many flood protection systems were not built for. Rivers creep over levees or burst them. There’s nowhere for the water to go.
The Dutch have long been proud tamers of rivers. They have built huge networks of levees to keep rising waters away from farms and cities. But now officials are trying what seems like an obvious approach: making room for the water.
Vic Gremmer lives in a cozy little house on a small hill in the Nordwaard Polder, just outside of Dordrecht, near Rotterdam. Gremmer is retired from his job as a social worker. Now he spends his time painting and hunting.
In the early ’90s, after he married his wife, Chris, they decided to have kids and move out to the countryside where willow trees line the banks of the Nieuwe Merwede river. Gremmer remembers, “Dutch clouds, a blue sky — we said ‘we’re going to live here!’”
They chose an affordable little house next to a farm and spent their summer days out in the boat or the garden. That house has long since been demolished.
