No cycling here, but we do cover environmental issues involving Copenhagen or Denmark on occasion. Whatever the case, I just thoroughly enjoyed writing that title.
The Danish company COWI, through its subsiduary in the States, will be a part of building the new dike that will protect New Orleans. Yes, Danes do dikes. We'll do them anywhere, but we like doing them on the west coast of the country, facing the North Sea.
If you have a thing for dikes, COWI have an illustrated flash feature about their project.
8 thinking out louds:
This isn't a "my dyke's bigger than your dyke" competition, is it ? You'll have a hard time beating this.
Mind you, this isn't quite the longest dyke in the world any more. The Koreans built one 500 m longer in 2006.
nope. we don't care how big they are, we just like doing them.
It's not as if other countries don't also have coastlines. However, just like the cycling infrastructure, sea defences seem to be one of those things that both these two countries seem to be able to see are important enough to get on with.
Indeed. We actually have 7300 km of coastline. Not including Greenland or the Faroe Islands. Then you can add 39,000 and 1117 km respectively. Although the latter two don't need dikes.
Ironic that Greenland's melting ice cap is one of the reasons we'll need bigger dikes in the future.
Dikes can be harmful to marine life. It is better to maintain original coastlines than to have dikes covered in fishnets lying around getting wet. The problem is that they upset the status quo and can cause erosion of the water bed due to the constant pounding.
Replacement of mangrove swamps in Australia with rigid erections has been a disaster, especially in sulfide soils.
New Orlean's problems are more due to the drop in sedimentation resulting in subsidence.
Where those dikes are going are two pretty much environmentally dead areas. They're artificial waterways created for navigation that changed freshwater wetlands into brackish really freakin' wetlands. You'll see some birds but not many fish or aquatic live because of the salt levels. MR-GO, where that's big dike is going, is in going to be closed so the wetlands can start regenerating. I can't read Danish, so I'm go go out on a limb and say that dike is part of the closure.
The Dutch evolved beyond building just dikes, just look at the Oosterscheldekering surge barrier. This construction was decided on to preserve the salt water marine life etc. Much more costly, incredibly hard to execute, but they managed. It's now considered one of the greatest constructions in the world (note; I'm not boasting, I don't care for that)
Also, the flooding dangers of our river delta (coming from the Alps) had us change course, as well. It's about giving more room too rivers and wetlands, functioning as buffers, which meant a lot of farms had to move out of the way.
I also posted something in August about the most recent Delta Plan, dealing with challenges for the next 200 years.
like i said, we just like doing dikes. biggest, best, etc. not interesting to us. we just do 'em good. :-)
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