Today we went on a tour of the Lek River system. We looked at different management of the water in the area.
This is a lock system that we saw on the Lek river. It is different than most lock systems that I have seen before. For this one the big metal doors that you see lower down into the water on both sides and the water is pumped in or out.
And here is a picture of one of the doors close up.
After a tour down the Lek river, we went to a pair of visor dams. There are three sets of these in the country to control the amount of water that is in all of the rivers in the Netherlands.
And this is what we had to drive across to get to the parking lot for the visor dam. It was about 2-3 feet deep. There had been a lot of rain lately, and in the winter Netherlands normally gets more rain.
This is us crossing the flooded area. The white building in the distance is the control center for the dam.
So we walked out to the side of the dam. And just as a reference as to how much water there is, you see all of the water below the walkway. During the summer that is dry and grassy.
Once we got to the side we went down and under the river to get to the middle of the dam. This was the tunnel that we walked through to get to the middle.
This is the view from the middle of the dam. That line of dirt in the middle of the water is the summer dike. The winter dike is where the water is up to now. Yeah there is a lot of water.
This is one of the 8 motors that lift the visors or lower them. There is a gear ratio of 1:40,000 and the motor that turns the gears is the size of a lawnmower motor, oh and if the motors fail you can crank the visors up or down by hand. (the visor dams are made of solid steel so they aren't light)
This is the stairway to get up to the motor rooms. Matt kept saying that I was going to fall down. but I didn't. :)
This is a lock system that we saw on the Lek river. It is different than most lock systems that I have seen before. For this one the big metal doors that you see lower down into the water on both sides and the water is pumped in or out.
And here is a picture of one of the doors close up.
After a tour down the Lek river, we went to a pair of visor dams. There are three sets of these in the country to control the amount of water that is in all of the rivers in the Netherlands.
And this is what we had to drive across to get to the parking lot for the visor dam. It was about 2-3 feet deep. There had been a lot of rain lately, and in the winter Netherlands normally gets more rain.
This is us crossing the flooded area. The white building in the distance is the control center for the dam.
So we walked out to the side of the dam. And just as a reference as to how much water there is, you see all of the water below the walkway. During the summer that is dry and grassy.
Once we got to the side we went down and under the river to get to the middle of the dam. This was the tunnel that we walked through to get to the middle.
This is the view from the middle of the dam. That line of dirt in the middle of the water is the summer dike. The winter dike is where the water is up to now. Yeah there is a lot of water.
This is one of the 8 motors that lift the visors or lower them. There is a gear ratio of 1:40,000 and the motor that turns the gears is the size of a lawnmower motor, oh and if the motors fail you can crank the visors up or down by hand. (the visor dams are made of solid steel so they aren't light)
This is the stairway to get up to the motor rooms. Matt kept saying that I was going to fall down. but I didn't. :)
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