Tweede Maasvlakte indicated with a dotted line. The white blotches to the North-East are caused by sunlight reflecting off the greenhouses of the Westland area.
The Tweede Maasvlakte will be a 2,000 hectares large area atttached to the first Maasvlakte (‘tweede’ means ‘second’) outside Rotterdam that will be used as part of the port. The Betuwelijn railroad will be extended into it. It will mainly be used as a container harbour.
The new land will grow the area of the harbour by 20%. The dam surrounding Tweede Maasvlakte will contain 20,000 blocks of stone. RTV Rijnmond calls it an ‘ultra-Dutch project’, as it involves ‘building land to trade upon’.
To my knowledge there are no plans yet to extend this thing all the way to England, though people have been talking about moving our national airport to the sea.
(Image: NASA + 24 Oranges)
