DRAINING NORTH SEA

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 941, 7 April 1930, Page 14

DRAINING NORTH SEA

GIGANTIC SCHEME TO REACH MINERALS AMAZEMENT IN BRITAIN Although German engineers are reported to be evolving a gigantic scheme to drain a large portion of the North Sea, the news has caused amazement among British experts. If the plan did become a reality eastern England would lose miles of its sea coast, to -the consternation of hotel-keepers and landladies at dozens Of resorts. But with a great part of the North Sea drained, a vast new land would come into being with rich mineral wealth to keep a population of over 20,000,000 people. Problems of the scheme are not merely confined to the stupendous obstacles which would face the engineers. For who would own the new land, and how would it affect Great Britain’s trade and security. Two giant dams, say the German experts, would be built. One would stretch from Hunstanton (Norfolk) to the upper coast of Denmark, and the other round Kent, across the Channel and along the Belgium and Dutch coasts to the neighbourhood of Scheveningen. Dover-Calais Bridge! Dover and Calais would be connected by giant bridges, thus making a, Channel tunnel unnecessary. Norfolk and Essex would lose their seaboard. And between the dams would be a new land over 100,000 sexuare miles m area possessing amazing mineral wealth, and probably rich oilfields. Perhaps with the disappearance of the sea dwellers on the east “coast” wouid suffer, but our western ports would become a centre of still greater activity. With the disappearance of so many northern European ports, goods for Northern Europe would be sent to Britain, were railways would take them across the country into the new land.

Such conjectures are somewhat untimely, however, for one of England’s peatest engineering authorities, who has an unrivalled knowledge of draininf>, regards the plan as absurd. .J* j s Jhst 3- ivild-cat scheme,” he said, ‘and X would not have credited German engineers with anything quite so absurd. “To drain the Zuyder Zee is expensive, but practicable, but to drain half 01 the North Sea is quite out of the question. “Parts of the North Sea are half a mile deep at low tide. A dam would have to rise a further twenty-six feet tide ” f the Water to c °P e with high “IMPOSSIBLE” He explained that tidal conditions off the English coast also made the scheme, in his opinion, impossible. Pi ofessor A. M. Low, -the eminent scientist and inventor, said that he did not think that the plan' was “utterly impossible.” J But it would take a long time to complete,” lie added, “and by then developments in other spheres might make it unnecesary. “If, for instance, the project takes ten years to accomplish, it might be made unnecessary by the existence of psriect tubes and airplane services. “The North Sea bed mav be rich in mineral wealth, but with all the monev spent on -the dams much mineral wealth in places of more easy access could be developed. “A dry North Sea would, of course, greatly affect the fisheries, and fish is an essential part of food.” So it seems that hotel-keepers and land-ladies on the east coast of England can rest content in the assurance that a dry “seaboard” is a thing of the very distant future.