BRABANT FIGHTS AGAINST WATER

                         The Grevelingen        

The activities as part of the delta plan are moving more inland after the success by Veerse gat. Namely the closing of the Grevelingen with a dam between Schouwen-Duiveland and Goeree-Overflakkee. The dam will have a length more then 6 kilometers.  

The work starts in 1958. As usually they start with building a work dock , this time the work dock is construct by Bruinisse. By fisher village they make excavations for a 125 by 16 meters lock.    

At the same time they build the lock they are also working on the dam. They start building the dam on the plaat van Oude Tonge [ sandbank].  After this part of the dam is ready there are still 3 gully's remains.  One has a length of 400 meters on the side of plaat van Oude Tonge and a dubbel gully on the side of the corner of Sint Jacob en Krammer.   

In 1961 the dam on the Oude-Tonge is ready. In the southern shutter hole they let a threshold sink. For that they use old materials such as sink but they used also some new materials such as plastic. 

For the community Bruinisse everything changed a lot.  

In may 1962  the hole between the plate of Oude-tonge and the new shutters lock is closed.

But the dame is still not ready because there where still two gully's left on the side of   Goeree-Overflakkee. There were a few ideas to do it. The first idea was a bridge construction so trucks could dump the rubbish into the gully.

But the there came a better idea namely a cable railway. The meaning was that the cable railway was stretch over the water and then the gondola take the stones to the gully and dump it. 

The cable railway was made in French and cost 8,2 million guilder the cable railway was first 5,8 million guilder but because one cable of 9 cm!! brook and and because of the delay the cable railway was costing more. 

By the building of the dam they used a cable railway.

In January the fate strikes. Because during a January storm a part of all the works got destroyed. But happiness they repaired everything very quick. In totally they dump 170.000 ton of material. After that they spout sand on the dam.         

And then...............the de dam is finally ready in 1965.

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