Drainage works in the Zuiderzee project

A large part of The Netherlands consist of polders. Today about sixty-five percent of the total area would be submerged continuously, had this part not been surrounded by dikes and the water not been discharged artificially. The Zuiderzee project is the most recent land reclamation project in the long history of land reclamation in The Netherlands. Probably the Zuiderzee project would never have been developed without this history. To illustrate this statement first a summary of the history of land reclamation in The Netherlands is given. The second part of the lecture deals with the general aspects of the Zuiderzee project and the third major part deals with the specific aspects of drainage works in the Zuiderzee project.