Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: It's the classic Dutch battle, land vs. sea, fought for centuries in low-lying Zeeland province by proud farmers now aghast at government plans to surrender to the "enemy" and flood their fields."Look how beautiful it is, one cannot destroy that," Ewald Baecke, a 66-year-old a farmer in Nieuw-Namen, said incredulously -- pointing to the poplar trees lining the dyke that shields vast fields of beets, potatoes and onions from the water. …On Friday, however, the government is set to announce whether it will allow flooding of this area called the Hedwige Polder.
The measure is part of a 2005 deal with neighbouring Belgium to enlarge the Western Scheldt estuary -- a key entry point in Dutch territory for ship traffic heading upriver to the Belgian port of Antwerp, Europe's second largest. But a local outcry has tugged at the psyche of a nation that lies two-thirds under sea level, and transformed the Hedwige Polder into a potent symbol of man's mastery over water.
…The flooding was proposed to create a nature reserve to compensate for environmental damage envisaged by dredging the estuary. …"In Zeeland, people say: 'We have fought against the sea and won: we laid dry the land and now we have to give it back ... and that for the benefit of another country'!" he told AFP. The Dutch government has yet to decide on a mode of compensation for the Hedwige farmers, who lease what Baecke called this "extremely fertile" reclaimed land from a single owner....
A mill on the Meuse River, shot by Havang 18, Wikimedia Commons
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