Hondsbossche and Pettemer sea defence

The Hondsbossche and Pettemer sea defence has been strengthened.

Closing this last weak link means that the coast of North and South Holland can now withstand storms of the highest category.

The original sea defence consisted of a 5.5 km long dyke.

Since the 19th century, it had already been widened and raised several times.

The sea defence was strengthened – and safety guaranteed – by creating a line of dunes and a beach in front of the dyke,

by spraying an enormous amount of sand off the coast of North Holland.

The Netherlands thus grew by the equivalent of 400 football fields.

This improved our safety and created more opportunities for recreation, tourism, nature and the economy in the area.

The constant challenge when solving such problems is how to do so as beautifully and naturally as possible. If you continue to raise hard sea walls, then you are actually separating people from the sea. But, when you choose a solution like this one here – widening the sandy coast and making the beach more attractive – the result is beautiful.

This project is a collaboration between the government, the province of North Holland and the Hollands Noorderkwartier District Water Board.

Together with local residents, businesses and other stakeholders, we investigated the best way to strengthen our coast.

It is now safe behind this sea defence for the next 50 years.