SATV, Kathmandu, Aug. 03 - Jeroen Wouda and Dirk Boom walk slowly along a Dutch dike, prodding at the bone dry surface with metal rods and scanning the parched grass for patches of green that could give away the location of a leak.
In a scene that brings to mind the fictional Dutch boy who heroically plugs a hole in a dike with his finger, the two men are hunting for cracks in the low-lying Netherlands' famed water defenses caused a drought that is gripping Europe and has fueled raging wildfires in France and Spain and sent the Danube and Rhine rivers to record low levels.
Unlike the low-tech solution in American author Mary Mapes Dodge's 19th-century story, modern dike patrols are able to plot possible problems caused by drought in an app and send it to authorities who can then quickly carry our repairs.
In the Netherlands and neighboring Germany cargo ships that ply the Rhine and its offshoots have been forced to carry significantly less freight or risk running aground in shallow navigation channels. Farmers facing restrictions on irrigating their crops are warning of smaller fruit harvests and rising prices this season.
And for some houseboat owners, the drought has left their water-borne homes resting on sandy river bed.
Peter van Duijvendijk is a flood defense manager at the Schieland en de Krimpenerwaard water corporation, one of 21 such organizations covering the Netherlands that are responsible for issues including flood control.
He has a team of 140 volunteers who are responsible for checking about 100 kilometers (60 miles) of dikes, reporting any problems they find. So far, this dry summer there have not discovered any major issues. But they remain alert now and likely into the fall.
The volunteers "are our eyes and ears on the dike," Van Duijvendijk told The Associated Press.
Like many inland dikes, the barrier in agricultural fields near the small town of Waddinxveen, east of The Hague, is made of peat that needs to be damp to be strong enough to hold back water. It is in one of the lowest points in the Netherlands, some 5 meters (16 feet) below sea level. (AP)
