Earlier in this series, I wrote about the Delfland Water Authority and the Maeslant Barrier: the governance and the giant engineering that keep the Netherlands dry. This post is about something smaller in scale but just as important. It’s a place where new ideas for managing urban flooding get
In my last post, I compared the Dutch bet on prevention with the American bet on response. This time I want to write about the single most astonishing piece of prevention I have ever seen: the Maeslant Barrier (Maeslantkering), the giant storm-surge gate that guards Rotterdam. I have spent
In my last post, I wrote about the Dutch Way, the habits of directness, consensus, and warmth that shape how the Dutch manage water. This time I want to look at a harder, more technical difference between our two countries, one that came up in almost every briefing on
In my last post, I wrote about how the Netherlands went from roughly 3,500 water authorities to 21. Structure matters. But throughout this NAFSMA trip, our Dutch hosts kept pointing to something that doesn’t show up on an organizational chart. They called it the Dutch Way. As they described it
I’ve been working through a series of posts from my September trip to the Netherlands and England with NAFSMA, touring European flood control facilities. The first post went up from the Biesbosch, and more are coming. But I’m interrupting the series because something closer to home deserves attention
In my last post, I wrote from the Noordwaard, a former farming polder (or protected basin) on the edge of De Biesbosch National Park, where the Dutch lowered a dike on purpose so the river can spill into the polder at high water. That was the Dutch trying something
I’m writing this from the Netherlands. Today I spent the day at the Noordwaard, a former farming polder (or protected basin) on the edge of De Biesbosch National Park. I traveled here with NAFSMA (the National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies) as part of a mission to learn
On September 21, 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed a statewide state of emergency in anticipation of a developing El Niño event that NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center projects has a greater than 90% chance of reaching “very strong” intensity this fall and winter, with a 69% chance of surpassing every El
In case you haven’t heard, the National Weather Service is predicting, with high certainty, a very strong El Niño this year. A strong El Niño has already formed with a 90% chance of it strengthening to very strong and a 60% chance of it developing into the strongest since 1950.
I was recently asked to speak at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the National Waterways Conference, a national trade group advocating in the areas of navigation, flood control, and water supply. Specifically, I was asked to speak on the effects of the 2023 Federal Court of Appeals decision in Ideker