>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Vandergraaf, Chuck <vandergraaft@aecl.ca>
>To: Dick Fischer <dfischer@mnsinc.com>; asa@calvin.edu <asa@calvin.edu>;
>'Glenn R. Morton' <grmorton@waymark.net>
>Date: June 24, 1998 9:03 PM
>Subject: RE: Sumer under water?
Being born in the Dutch province of Zeeland and having lived when I grew
upfor about ten years about 10 km away from the Waddenzee in the province of
Groningen, I'll try to answer some of the questions posed.
Indeed, between WWI and WWII the Zuiderzee was closed off from the North
Sea bya dike. Then four polders were made in the Zuiderzee, which was
originally an arm of the North Sea, created in the Middle Ages by the
St.Elisabeth flood. Part of the water of the Rhine mptied in the Zuiderzee.
I do not know, how that fact influence the siltiness of the soil, but from
what I understand of the rivers in Sumer, they brought water from the
mountains too. If that is so, then maybe the fact that the first polder was
prime agricultural land after 10 to 20 years, indicates that the salt may
not take 200 years to leach out. After WWII three more polders were brought
in to production (one was poldered in before the war.) To my knowledge the
silt is gone now.
Zeeland (in the delta of Meuse and Rhine) was a result of the
St.Elisabeth flood as well.
(here my new program decide to send the message, when I was looking up the
date of that flood. I was unsuccessful, and decided to forget about it for
now. I have in my mind the date 1237, but did not verify it.)
During WWII and again during a storm in 1953, a lot of the province was
flooded, including the place where my father spent his youth: Krabbendijke.
After a few years the land was useable again. I do not know what was used
to get rid of the salt.
At the present time dikes are heightened again in The Netherlands. The
initial reason was, that the Rhine is bringing more and more water to the
sea. Also, the warming of the climate and the melting of the Arctic
necessitates the heightening of the sea-dikes. (Now think of countries like
Bangladesh, where they do not have the money to build dikes to protect them.
What is the task of N.Americans in that regard? We have a high standard of
living, there is poverty. The aid N.Americans give is more than consumed by
the interest that poor countries are forced to pay to the rich countries.
Do we as Christians have a task? I know that this is a totally different
subject.)
Jan de Koning
Willowdale, Ont.