Water retention

Water can sometimes be scarce. Denk the increasingly frequent hot, dry summers. To maintain sufficient water in every season, more measures are needed to retain water in the area for longer.

Water for later

Water flows from high to low. To retain water in our area for longer, we need to make more effort to slow down the drainage of water to lower areas. Water in higher areas must remain there as long as possible to limit damage to agriculture and nature. This is not easy to achieve. We will have to give nature a helping hand by using pumping stations, weirs inlets. This will allow water to flow further into our area via smaller ditches and streams. However, the water authority for the most important and larger watercourses play a role in controlling water in the region. For measures that go beyond these main waterways, we need the cooperation of many other owners and stakeholders. We want to engage in more dialogue with the local community about this: for water for later.

Types of measures

We are not sitting still. All kinds of measures are already being implemented to keep water in the area for longer. Denk :

  • Meandering streams: by allowing streams that were once straightened to meander again, the water travels a longer distance from high to low and therefore remains in the area for longer.
  • creating nature-friendly banks: gently sloping banks provide more space for fish and small aquatic animals, thereby improving water quality. Shallow water along these banks also flows more slowly.
  • Deliberately making ditches shallower: even without nature-friendly banks, a shallow ditch is a good way to slow down the natural drainage of water.
  • Filling in ditches: going one step further is filling in ditches completely. This is not possible everywhere. In places where it is possible, water does not flow away but sinks into the ground.
  • By improving the structure of the soil, it is possible to retain more water.

Where do we store water?

  • In the Zuidelijk Westerkwartier, work is underway to develop the Dwarsdiep stream valley.
    The aim is to retain 2.7 million cubic meters of water. The stream valley will be developed in a natural way.
  • There are already 36 kilometers of nature-friendly banks in the Groningen part of our region. By 2022, the total should be 45 kilometers.
  • South of De Onlanden lie the high-lying stream valleys of Drenthe. The focus will be on this area in the coming years.
  • When we design an area for temporary water storage, this often goes hand in hand with restoring nature and the need to retain water for longer periods. For example, the water level in the Dwarsdiep can easily be temporarily raised. We then use the Dwarsdiep to store water. At the same time, we want to keep the water in the area for longer with the new design of the stream valley.
    In the Zuidelijk Westerkwartier, the temporary storage of water in lower-lying areas is also combined with water retention in higher-lying areas.
    In this way, the possibilities for 'storing' and 'retaining' water are always considered in conjunction with each other.

Mountains or water retention: what is the difference?

Now that dry periods are becoming more frequent, many people are wondering why we continue to discharge so much water into the sea instead of retaining it in the area. The answer is simple: we have to continue to discharge large amounts of water because otherwise we would no longer be able to live safely in our country. We sometimes have to discharge millions of liters (at once).
We store water to prevent flooding. We store water in low-lying areas. We store the water for a while and then slowly discharge it into the sea.
Of course, the water authority is water authority of the need to retain water for longer. We do this to get through times of scarcity and to maintain sufficient water in every season.