Zuiderzee Works Zuiderzee Works The Zuiderzee Works () is a man-made system of dams and dikes, land reclamation and water drainage work, in total the largest hydraulic engineering project undertaken by the Netherlands during the twentieth century. The project involved the damming of the Zuiderzee, a large, shallow inlet of the North Sea, and the reclamation of land in the newly enclosed water using polders. Its main purposes are to improve flood protection and create additional land for agriculture. The American Society of Civil Engineers declared these works, together with the Delta Works in the South-West of the Netherlands, as among the
Motorways of the Sea land. The routes selected to be Motorways of the Sea should be able to maintain a series of quality criteria; these pertain to frequency, port to port costs, simplicity of administrative tasks. Future routes should compensate for congestion experienced, for example when crossing the Channel (as the similar road networks should do for routes crossing the Alps or the Pyrenees). One envisaged impact of the Motorways of the Sea is energy savings, pollution reductions and more capacity on current overland European transport networks. The adoption of Article 12a of the TEN-T by Council and European Parliament gave a legal framework