The Afsluitdijk runs for 32 kilometres across the top of what used to be the Zuiderzee. It is one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century, and it is the reason that a significant portion of Friesland exists above sea level at all.

National inspectors rated a 14-kilometre section as "insufficient", not failing, not imminently dangerous, but no longer meeting the standards required for a country where 26% of the land is below sea level.

The repair cost is estimated at €380 to €420 million. The Rijkswaterstaat has the technical capacity to do the work. What it does not have is a confirmed budget allocation. Three consecutive national budgets have included the project in planning documents and excluded it from actual spending lines.

Meanwhile, climate models project a 30cm rise in North Sea water levels by 2050 and a 90cm rise by 2100. The window for relatively cheap preventive maintenance is closing. If the dike fails, not this year, not next year, but in thirty, the cost in flood damage to agricultural land, property, and infrastructure would be measured in billions, not hundreds of millions.

The people who live behind the dike know this. The people who allocate budgets in The Hague seem to be hoping the problem will resolve itself, or that it will become someone else's responsibility.

It will not.