Major engineering operation going on in Amsterdam.

Today was an important day in the building of the new north-south connection in the Amsterdam underground network. A new tunnel build outside the main railway station will be slided below it. That moster weighs 22.000 metric tons!! Before this operation could commence 3000 wooden poles that supported the main part of the station, opened October 1889, had to be removed and the station itself had to be supported with an in situ build caissson. The tunnel is 136 meters long and 22 meters wide. It will take at least six weeks before this operation is completed.

here's an animation of this part of the project. Note the differences in waterlevels during the process. Quite impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTY9KWGTIUA

A Flickr collection of the project around the Censtral Station.

This project has been dogged with budget overruns, disasters and is way behind planning. Years in fact.

This is what happened when a leak in the building pit occurred. Centuries old buildings were on the verge of collapsing, with occupants inside. Disaster was eventually averted and these houses were saved and stabilized.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...racht_2008.jpg

Amazing work. I love these houses too! The beauty of old dutch architecture is you pass on the sidewalk and see inside the big windows and the life inside these homes. A totally open mentality and loads of charm.

We could learn a thing or two from the Dutch in terms of dealing with rising ocean levels. But the U.S. is held captive to corporate interests who choose to ignore that the polar caps are melting and Greenland is melting into the ocean. They are all about short term profits for themselves and the public be damned. As W so eloquently put it, "By then, I'll be dead. Heh , heh." [paraphrase]

Speaking of doing sea defese. Remember that Afsluitdijk I mentioned some time ago [[and what a funny word you thought it was)? There's now a recomendation to make it even higher. Plus a new water outlet for the IJssel lake behind it will be made, for which I did the very first serveying work, by staking out some probe locations.


http://i53.tinypic.com/2n20gu0.gif
The current set of sluises at the western end. Picture taken December 10, 1930.

http://i56.tinypic.com/ma8qas.gif
The location will be near 32 and 5, near the first bend.

http://i51.tinypic.com/25u02sg.gif
Artist impression.

So plenty of work ahead.

How much is all that going to cost and how will the Dutch pay for it?

I haven't heard anything about money. But since we managed to close off the south of the Netherlands, I think a 32 kilometer stretch of dam we can manage. The Deltaworks lasted 30 years before that was completed. I read that the Afsluitdijk would be handled in two seperated phases, the first of which would guarantee the dike until 2050. The most favored proposal would be to asphalt the dike after which fresh soil would be applied to cover it so grass could grow. The dike as it is now also is some sort of layer cocktail.




Someone designed this rather outladish design.

The article mentions scouring sluices. Will this change sea water to fresh water?