Boskalis delivers climate adaptive projects

Boskalis, a Papendrecht based company operating in the dredging, maritime infrastructure and maritime services sectors, is responding to the growing need for coastal protection and flood prevention on a global scale.

“As well as through advances in technology, we aim to reduce emissions and ecological impacts through the integration of different stages of coastal maintenance and exploring alternative maintenance strategies,” said Thomas Vijverberg, Deputy Manager Hydronamic and part of the Dutch Coastline Challenge team.

“The Netherlands focus provides a ‘living lab’ for sustainable and scalable coastal maintenance techniques which can then be expanded and deployed internationally.”

Examples of Boskalis’ climate-adaptive projects in 2021 include:

• Strengthening more than 33 kilometers of dikes along the Markermeer between Hoorn and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The dikes serve as flood protection for more than 1.2 million people;

• In May 2021 Boskalis was awarded a conditional contract for a major dike reinforcement, river widening and area development project at the Meanderende Maas in the Netherlands. The project is part of the national Flood Protection Program in which the government and regional Water Boards work together to protect the Netherlands against flooding;

• Reinforcement of the Netherlands’ coastline at Noordwijk (over 11km) and Wassenaar (over 6km) by foreshore replenishment with more than 8.5 million cubic meters of sand using a number of medium-sized trailing suction hopper dredgers;

• Commencement of the second phase of construction of the Marker Wadden islands nature reserve in the Netherlands that provides a major boost to the ecological quality of the Markermeer lake. Two new islands, with a surface area of 300 hectares below and above the water level, will be added to the nature reserve. Like the previous islands, they will be constructed with silt, clay, peat and sand from the bottom of the Markermeer lake.