Zuiderzee Works - New Land

New Land

After damming off the sea, the next step involved creating new land, new polders. This was achieved by damming off portions of the IJsselmeer, and then pumping all the water out. The first polder, Wieringermeer, was dammed in 1929 and fully drained in 1930. The third, the Noordoostpolder, was not fully drained until 1942 and played a vital role for the Dutch Underground resistance during World War II, as the fresh polder offered numerous hiding places. After the war, work was started on draining the Flevolands, a massive project totalling almost 1000 km². This area is now home to Lelystad and Almere; the latter is the fastest growing city in the Netherlands (in part because of its proximity to Amsterdam). Another large polder was planned in the Markermeer. This project was heavily debated until plans were abandoned in the early 2000s. A new province, Flevoland, was created out of the Noordoostpolder and the Flevolands in 1986, thereby completing the Works.

This new land led to an identity change for towns including Lemmer, Vollenhove, Blokzijl, the former islands of Urk and Schokland, Wieringen and others. Kuinre suffered particularly because it was cut off from open water.

The other major project started in 1927 was the construction of the 200 km² polder in the northwest, the first and the smallest of the five projected polders. It replaced the Wieringermeer, the body of water south of Wieringen, and also the name of the new polder. It was the only polder reclaimed from the Zuiderzee itself (the others were reclaimed after the Afsluitdijk was finished), but it wasn't entirely the first. A small test polder of some 0.4 km² was constructed in 1926–1927 near Andijk in North Holland to research the effects drainage would have on the soil of the Zuiderzee and how best to configure the new polders.

Building the encircling dike for the Wieringermeer was harder than it was for the later polders, because the Wieringermeer dikes were built before the completion of the Afsluitdijk. That meant the tidal currents of the Zuiderzee were still present. As a consequence, they were somewhat higher. Construction started on the 18 km dike from Den Oever on Wieringen and the new construction-island of Oude Zeug and progressed satisfactorily. The Wieringermeer was closed off from the Zuiderzee in July 1929. The next step was draining all the water from the future polder.

Drainage of a polder is performed by a pumping station or mill (gemaal in Dutch). Two were built for the Wieringermeer, the Leemans, a diesel powered station, near Den Oever and the Lely, an electrically powered one, near Medemblik. Different power systems were used in the stations as a safety mechanism. If one station lost power, the other one would still be able to keep the polder dry. The pumping mechanism itself was based on a variation of the Archimedes screw, as designed by A. Baldwin Wood. The stations, completed in February 1930, managed to drain the polder after six months of continuous pumping. "Drained" in this context does not mean the land was wholly dry; extensive pools of shallow water still littered the muddy landscape. To make the soil usable it had to be further drained by a network of drainage canals. Small ditches were dug leading to larger watercourses, which in turn transported their water to the main drainage canals. These canals, dredged when the polder was still filled with water, conducted surplus water to the pumping stations. The resulting dehydration caused the former seabed to sink by over a metre in some places. Once the ground had settled, the smaller ditches were replaced with underground drainage tubes, which would be used for the normal drainage of the polder.

With the hydrological infrastructure in place, the virgin land was developed to prepare for its later cultivation. The first plant to establish itself, though more so in the later polders than in the Wieringermeer, was reed, sown from the air by plane onto the muddy flats while the polder was still being drained. This sturdy plant helped evaporate the water and bring air into the soil, thereby solidifying its structure and further preventing the emergence of unwanted weeds.

After the first infrastructure was put in place, the reed was burnt and replaced by rapeseed, turning the newborn polder into a yellow sea of flowers in spring. These crops were succeeded by various grains. In the Wieringermeer the first was rye, but the later polders plant wheat, then barley, and finally oats. This process took years, but once finished allowed planting other crops. At the same time, other infrastructure such as roads and housing were built.

The Wieringermeer, as the first of the envisioned five polders, served as a major testbed for ideas and techniques for the following projects. It is closest to the original concept of the new land being primarily used as agricultural land and it has retained a strong rural character. Four villages eventually were formed in the polder: Slootdorp (1931), Middenmeer (1933), Wieringerwerf (1936), and Kreileroord (1957).

Local governance presented a new problem. The area was divided among the mainland municipalities according to the boundaries used when it was water-covered. This configuration was not always practical on the ground and unnecessarily split responsibilities among several bodies. The first solution was a form of government called an openbaar lichaam or "public body", a complicated arrangement which incorporated both the government body in charge of the actual development and an appointed committee responsible for public governance. As the polder became more populated, the demand for representation increased until finally on July 1, 1941 the municipality of Wieringermeer was established.

In the closing days of World War II, the Nazis detonated explosives severely damaging the Wieringermeer dike. No casualties were incurred but the polder sank, and the high water and a subsequent storm destroyed most of the infrastructure built in the previous decade. Reconstruction followed quickly and by the end of 1945 the polder was declared drained again and rebuilding the roads, bridges, houses and farms was greatly facilitated by the experience of building them the first time.