Although it rains constantly, the Netherlands faces a future of clean water shortages, according to Dutch Delta commissioner Co Verdaas.

In a keynote speech in a forum at the Aquatech conference in Amsterdam on Tuesday,  the Delft University professor of urban area development said the Netherlands is in denial and that future problems cannot simply be solved with technology.

“For most citizens in the Netherlands, it’s unimaginable that on a hot summer day you run out of fresh water because we have rain and rivers,” he said. “So what’s our problem? If you are living in a bathtub [like our delta], you have to get rid of the water all the time. That’s how we built our system.”

He said it might have been better to turn off the fresh water taps for a period in the hot, dry summer of 2022, because the intricate Dutch delta system was struggling to hold onto enough water for the country’s needs.

Meanwhile, in his view, the €1.7 billion a year Delta Fund is “not enough money” to solve the three most pressing problems: flood protection, freshwater availability and spatial adaptation – how and where cities are built, future-proof agriculture and areas for water storage.

“We are in a shift at the moment,” he said. “We have a history of fighting the water, defending ourselves and now we have to accept we cannot just look for technical measures. We have to accept the extremes, and that’s a challenge.”

As sea levels rise, he said, the extra levels of salt water will cause issues, while storing fresh water for the driest days of summer is a huge problem in the densely-populated country.

Meanwhile climate change creates more and different flooding risks: periods of rainfall are shorter and heavier, and a separate research paper partly by Deltares, published this month in Nature: Water, predicts 23 major global dam breaks in the next 10 years.

Rain bottlenecks

Amsterdam municipality admitted in a council briefing last week that it is vulnerable to increasing periods of heavy rainfall and the measures that it has are “inadequate” if there is more than 150mm of rain in 48 hours.

Three detailed maps show the areas of the city with the most risk of water problems in general, with more than 60mm of rain an hour plus a street-by-street analysis of extreme, very urgent and urgent “rain bottlenecks”, such as De Lairessestraat in Amsterdam Zuid, the Bellamybuurt and Rivierenbuurt.

Labour MP and former geography teacher Geert Gabriëls told Dutch News that as the country aims to build almost a million houses by 2030, the focus must be on finding high ground. He believes a principle to make “ground and water” concerns the number one priority must not be scrapped. “We have general principles of safe ground rather than unsafe ground,” he said. “Others say we will build everywhere and solve it with [innovation], but you can’t do that for centuries.”

At the conference in Amsterdam, other experts pointed out that while increasing amounts of water are reused domestically in places like Flanders in Belgium, the typical water usage in the Netherlands is 50% higher at around 120 litres per household per day.

Shortage

Verdaas told the room of international water experts at the RAI Amsterdam conference centre that not everyone in the Netherlands has accepted the reality of his country: a location categorised by the UN as a vulnerable delta, just like Bangladesh.

“We have to make inevitable decisions,” he told the conference. “And for you that seems obvious, but with our history, with fighting the water and defending ourselves, this is a new area we are entering. We have to make decisions, and in society that’s also a big challenge, because if I tell people we have a shortage of fresh water, they look at me like I’m mad.

He added. “Maybe you think I am, but that’s the situation we’re in.”