How one Dutchman plans to keep America’s cities safe from flooding

Many see Hurricane Sandy as merely a taste of what’s to come for coastal regions like the New York tri-state area as sea levels rise, and it’s led to a call for action. But there are two approaches to tackling the water: either try to forcefully block it with walls and similar devices, or work around the water and give it a place to go. The latter approach has recently been championed in the Netherlands and last year one of the top minds in charge of keeping the Dutch dry came to work for the Obama administration. 

In December 2012, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was on vacation in Berlin when he decided to detour to the Netherlands. He wanted to get a firsthand sense of the famed Dutch approach to water management. Hurricane Sandy struck six weeks before, and in the aftermath, President Obama asked him to lead a task force, whose objective was not just to rebuild but also to radically rethink the region’s infrastructure in light of climate change. In the Netherlands, a man named Henk Ovink offered to be Donovan’s guide. Ovink was the director of the office of Spatial Planning and Water Management, meaning, essentially, that it was his job to keep the famously waterlogged country dry. As he learned about various Dutch innovations, Donovan was struck by the fact that Ovink looked at water as much in cultural as in engineering terms, which was a function of the centuries-old need of the Dutch to act together for protection.