On 21 October 2024, the project partners of Rural Roadwater Rescue visited Kloostersland / Low Tech Campus in Oirschot (near Eindhoven), the Netherlands. By bus, they visited 7 local hotspots and met 10 local partners who play an important role in the use case to realize a Climate Adaptive Water Hub (CAWH). It was an amazing day where we talked about the importance of water and the ideas how to deal with too much or a shortage of water in the local area.
Please find below our report of this two-day field visit, the travel guide: '7 hotspots, 10 stories' and pictures made during the field trip.
REPORT
Field trip to Kloostersland,
a future Climate Adaptive Waterhub
How can roadwater runoff be made of use to local communities? That is the question raised in Rural Roadwater Rescue. To answer this question, knowledge and experience in dealing with roadwater runoff is collected from France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. This knowledge and experience will contribute to a strategy to develop Climate Adaptive Waterhubs, local arrangements to deliver good quality roadwater runoff to local users. Technical information is, however, not sufficient to successfully build and operate Climate Adaptive Waterhubs. Stakeholder involvement is essential. Therefore stakeholders were central in the field visit to the future Climate Adaptive Waterhub Kloostersland, the Netherlands, October 2024.
Highway innovation
Highway A58 near the town of Oirschot crosses historical hydrological, ecological and societal routes and so does the Wilhelmina canal situated more to the north.
Rest area Kloosters at highway A58 operates as a testing site for road infrastructure innovations, under the name of InnovA58. Here experiments will start to collect and clean roadwater. A first step to connect the highway to local interests. A contribution to the future Climate Adaptive Waterhub.
300 years old farm Nieuw Zwanenburg nearby rest area Kloosters has been abandoned to make place for the highway. Road development has however been postponed and that gives the opportunity to grow crops to develop recyclable noise barriers and mile markers. Nieuw Zwanenburg will be developed further into a future lab. The international guests gathered at this historic farm the morning of 21th October and were welcomed by Ingeborg Absil – managing director at Rijkswaterstaat – and Stan Kerkhofs – projectmanager Rural Roadwater Rescue.
7 hotspots to visit, 10 stories to tell
From Nieuw Zwanenburg the guests were brought in two small busses to seven different locations in the area of the future Climate Adaptive Waterhub to meet and discuss with stakeholders involved. The stakeholders represented the local community (local resident, local farmer and cooperative Kloostersland) as well as organizations (Nature and Landscape conservation Brabant, Ministry of Defence, Province of North Brabant, Local Authority Oirschot, Water Board De Dommel and Rijkswaterstaat). At these seven spots the stakeholders successively talked about their interest in the area, their water demand and the role they could fulfill in developing and operating the Climate Adaptive Waterhub.
Opportunities to restore the water balance
The Oirschotse Heide in the south of the area is one of the seven visited locations and used as military training site. A wild and bumpy ride in army trucks delivered the guests to the part which the Dutch army would like to inundate. It is now probably the driest part, while it lies 5 meter higher than the other visited locations. Inundation would give the army the opportunity to also train in wet conditions. The army thus is a potential client for A58 road water.
Not only the highest part of the area suffers from drought, so does also the lowest part. Water shortage here is a result from drainage and groundwater extraction, explains the representative of Landscape Conservation Brabant. A local resident observes that land use is gradually changing while farmers adapt or end farming. That opens opportunities to restore the water balance.
Despite the overall drought in the Kloostersland area, occasionally water abundance happens as well. This sandy area shows both consequences of climate change, heavier rains and longer droughts. Heavy rainfall in spring this year turned the fields into ponds. The Wilhelmina canal then played an important role in transporting the surplus of water and protecting the town of Den Bosch from flooding. Future Climate Adaptive Waterhub and Wilhelmina canal should therefore be related.
A small Climate Adaptive Waterhub
The field trip ended at the farm Van de Pallande, home of Stan Kerkhofs. Stan tries to operate the farm as sustainable as possible. You could say that a small-scale model of a Climate Adaptive Waterhub is being developed on his farm. Roof water is collected, stored in ponds and used to water vegetables, fruit and flowers which are grown on commercial basis without applying fertilizers and pesticides. Techniques are developed and applied to minimize use of water. Diner prepared with vegetables from Van de Pallande was a perfect ending of the fieldtrip.
Lessons learned
The day after the field trip has been spent on exchanging information, discussing methodology and reflection. The meeting was hosted by Disruptor, facilitator of high tech startups, located at the campus of Eindhoven University.
In the development of the Climate Adaptive Waterhub Kloostersland three perspectives are to be united, says Anne Vader from Design Academy Eindhoven: the institutional perspective, the participatory perspective and the community perspective. At Kloostersland these perspectives are respectively studied by Groningen University, Design Academy Eindhoven and Cooperative Kloostersland. To bring these perspectives together, differences in interest, language and culture have to be bridged and that costs time and effort. Climate Adaptive Waterhub Kloostersland is on its way but not there yet.
A panel with Roger Mol (Chief Sustainability Officer at Rijkswaterstaat), Liesbeth Huybrechts (University of Hasselt), Jessica Schoffelen (Flemish Agency of Roads and Traffic) and Stan Kerkhofs reflected on the fieldtrip and discussed the approaches and future steps.
Work needs to be done before Rijkswaterstaat can embrace the idea of Climate Adaptive Waterhubs and multifunctional roads as a new approach to future (adjustments to) highways, reacted Roger Mol. More insight is needed in the conditions to be locally present to know when the approach will be feasible. Nevertheless, the idea of Climate Adaptive Waterhubs as first step to multifunctional roads is promising and therefore deserves support, concludes the panel.
Read the special travel guide for this day, click the PDF icon: