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Accustomed to humid weather, the Netherlands was in the middle of one of the wettest Julys on record, and Patrick van der Broeck was starting to get nervous.

Germany and Belgium were experiencing devastating floods that would eventually kill 220, and surging waters were pulling down the lowland Netherlands. “All the rain that falls across the border will inevitably come to us,” said Mr van der Broeck, senior hydrologist for the State of Limburg.

Earlier that month, however, Dutch officials celebrated the completion of a new flood control project that had stunned previous such efforts. Rather than build more dams on the Maas River and its tributaries as conventional flood control would do, they decided to work with nature – diverting waters into a 1,300-acre flood plain created to replicate the river’s old overflow channels.

“I was nervous,” said Mr Van der Broeck. “I was wondering if our project would pay off.”

He had reason to be. Extreme weather events are becoming more and more common in Europe and around the world. NS deadly torrential rain In Europe this summer was considered a 400-year-old event; in China, More than 20 inches of rain fell in just two days; New York City broke the one-hour rainfall record and triggered flash flooding. killed dozens of people in the area; The drought-stricken American West is in flames.

But no one died in the July flood in the Netherlands. Some tributaries wreaked havoc in the border area, but along the Maas River, which swelled to epic proportions, major urban centers remained safe and dry.

The Dutch are experienced in water management as they have dealt with sea level rise and river flooding long before climate change became a concern. With more than half of the country below sea level and the ocean contained by more traditional methods of flood control, river management has changed drastically.

Mr. Van der Broeck’s project, Maaspark Ooijen-Wanssum, a nature reserve Located near the small town of Wanssum, at the heart of the new approach. It did exactly what it was supposed to do during the flood, absorbing so much water that levels in parts of the Maas River dropped 13 inches, enough to avert a major disaster.

“Venlo and Roermond would have been flooded if we had not drained the areas to reroute excess water from the Maas River,” said Mr van der Broeck of the two regional cities. “We’ve been working against nature for a long time,” he said. “The river tells us it needs more space. We shouldn’t fight it. We have to cooperate with nature.”

This new thinking has its roots in two major floods in the 1990s that forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate. Shocked by this disaster, Dutch officials and hydrologists eventually concluded that raising barriers and digging canals were no longer sufficient to manage the water, as major floods became more frequent and more intense.

Rather than increase the height of the embankments, they decided to give more room to the natural flows of the major rivers. In 2007, the country embarked on a $2.7 billion project. Room for the River has conducted more than 30 projects along the Maas and Rhine Rivers to control floods by creating catchments that often mimic natural flood plains.

NS Maaspark Ooijen-Wanssum The project, which finished just before the July downpour, is a prime example of this idea. An old closed tributary of the Maas River has reopened along waterways that have been used for thousands of years. Some levees have been removed so that water can flow when needed; others were strategically placed to send water through natural channels. Several houses had to be demolished to create more floodplains and effectively more nature.

On a recent visit, there was water everywhere after the ancient river beds. At the end of a rare sunny day, insects buzzed around as elderly Dutch couples rode on their electric bikes.

Beavers, badgers and a wide variety of migratory birds now populate the park, which was mostly farmland before it was rebuilt. “It’s very nice to walk here,” said Mr. Van der Broeck. “An improvement in every way.”

The Netherlands is now full of such catchment basins that are a boon to everyday life but double as reservoirs when the rivers swell.

Still, experts say it’s not done enough. As sea defenses are built (but need constant maintenance) and catchments are built along major rivers, recent rainstorms have shown that even smaller creeks, ditches, and sewers can be deadly.

“I live relatively above sea level, but during that storm there was so much water that it couldn’t get out of the sewer system, so it came from our shower into our bedroom,” said Piet Dircke, water management manager. NS Arcadisis a design and engineering consultancy currently helping support coastal flood defenses around Manhattan and helping design new storm defenses around New Orleans that performed well during Hurricane Ida.

“Excessive rain and the lack of places to dispose of that water can turn small creeks into killers,” he said. “We normally have water shortages during the summer, so no one imagined the rain intensity and volumes at these rates. We don’t have charts for such events.”

Disasters have always driven Dutch water management. in 1953 North Sea floodDriven by a combination of high winds, high tides and low pressure, dams broke at 67 points in the western part of the Netherlands, killing 1,835 people. In response, the Dutch embarked on a plan called Delta Works. sea ​​defense It aims to prevent flooding once every 10,000 years.

Since then, the government has created not only the Chamber for Rivers, but also the Delta Programme, which now oversees all water management issues in the country. But July’s extreme rainstorm indicates once again that it’s time to reassess the nation’s water defences, said Mr Dircke. “Increasing the embankments by 10 centimeters won’t work,” he added, “and we have to map out sensitive places.”

By these he means hospitals, schools, nursing homes, computer server facilities and critical infrastructure – all crucial to assessing their vulnerability to flooding. “If there is an aged care home next to a river, we should consider replacing it, as it would take too much time to evacuate such vulnerable people in an emergency,” Dircke said.

He and other experts agree that such measures require a lot of investment. But if we do nothing, the costs will be much higher, said Peter Glas, head of the Delta Programme. he warned He said credit rating companies could downgrade the bond rating from its current triple A status if the Netherlands fails to take adequate measures to protect critical infrastructure.

“Climate change is here,” Mr. Glas said. “We need to adjust. If you don’t want to do this for the planet or for your safety, you have to do it for your wallet.”

Rosanne Kropman and Ilvy Njiokiktjien contributed to the reporting.