Challenge for Van der Kamp: How to keep the Juliana Canal dry?

Draining, keeping dry and filling again. That, in a nutshell, is the core of water management at the Juliana Canal. At Vanderkamp - The Dutch Water Engineers, they know a solution for every water issue. The same goes for the Juliana Canal. And that turns out to be quite a challenge in practice.

"From Van den Herik-Sliedrecht we were asked if we could pump out the last 2 meters when draining the Julianakanaal," explains Robert van den Dool project manager at Vanderkamp. "They did the first 5 meters themselves by propping the lock, but this was not possible for the last meters. These last meters also required additional expertise because of the silt. We drew up a plan to pump out the water on both the lock side and the dam side. At the lock there are three temporary pumps in different heights that pump the water from the canal into the middle lock chamber. The lower the water level, the murkier the water. To prevent sludge from being pumped along, we pumped the last water through a bypass to the west lock chamber. Here it could then settle." It didn't stop with these three pumps. Also on the dam side was a temporary pumping installation consisting of two pumps connected together and a flexible hose. This structure was suspended in a telescopic crane that lowered the installation along with the water level.

Pumps, buffer bins and containers

Once the Juliana Canal was empty, the trick was to also keep it empty because of rainwater. For this, Vanderkamp created a mobile installation with diesel pumps, buffer tanks and a container connected to each other by a 700-meter-long pipeline. "The difficulty here was to build an installation each time that is not in the way, given the many machines and people working here. In close consultation with the implementers, we determined the most optimal location."

2 million m3 of water

The most exciting moment is yet to come: the filling of the Juliana Canal. "In one week in April we will pump 2 million m3 into the canal with three siphon systems. But it's not so much about the number of m3, but much more about controlling the water. First of all, the water had to be pumped out in a controlled way because of the contaminated silt. In April, we may allow the canal to fill up again in a controlled way, so that there is no damage to the quays and bridges behind the lock."