Boskalis Contracted for Dutch Channel

The Vallei en Veuwe district water board awarded Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V. a contract for constructing the Veessen-Wapenveld high-water channel in the province of Gelderlands the Netherlands. The high-water channel will be between 500 and 1500 meters (about 1640 and 4920 feet) wide and will be formed by building two dikes of around eight kilometers (about 4.97 miles) long between the villages of Veessen and Wapenveld.

The project is one of more than 30 that make up the Dutch national Room for the River program which is aimed at providing better flood protection for areas close to the country’s rivers. The work will be executed with Van Hattum en Blakevoor in the IJsselweide construction consortium and is scheduled to start after the summer. The contract is valued at EUR 75 million ($97.5 million); Boskalis has a 50 percent share.

In addition to this new contract Boskalis is already involved in several other major hydraulic engineering projects in the context of the Netherland’s Room for the River program. These include the Lower Rhine project which involves adapting four flood plains along the river between the towns of Renkum and Rhenen; the Deventer project where a total of six secondary channels of the IJssel river are being dug along a length of 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles); and the Noordwaard project near the town of Gorinchem where an area is being ‘depoldered’ to allow the New Merwede river to flow more rapidly during periods of excess rainfall.