clapping for Lynetteholm stops

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Work on dredging in the entrance to the harbour, for the construction of the man-made island of Lynetteholm, has been stopped because further reports are now required on the environmental impact of dredging polluted sludge from the site and taking it down the coast to the bay at Køge to dump.

There is growing criticism of the new island and it has become a contentious issue in both parliament and in the press because criticisms or, at the very least least concern, from the Swedish government about the construction work and the island itself was not revealed when a construction act for the work was debated and passed in the Danish parliament.

work to start on dredging for the construction of Lynetteholm January 2022

note:
When I wrote about Lynetteholm in the New Year, I had to confess then that I was not sure what the Danish term klapning meant or rather what it means specifically in this context when clearing the sea bed of sludge by dredging.

The word used in all newspaper articles was klapning but dictionaries and Google always gave me clapping as the English translation but neither word was used in general articles on dredging.

Finally I tracked down the answer.

When sludge is dredged up to clear a channel or, as here, to form a stable base for constructing a man-made island, the sand and mud can be loaded onto large open barges or ships and they sail down the coast where, over a designated site, they open large flaps on the underside of the hull to release the sludge. Those flaps can be opened and closed several times to dislodge everything .... hence clapping. Obvious now I know.

looking out from Nordhavn to the Sound
at the centre of the view is Trekroner Fortet - the Three Crowns Fortress - built in the 1780s to guard the entrance to the harbour

the new island will fill the whole horizon beyond the fort with just a narrow channel for boats to enter and leave the inner harbour

by 2070, when building work on the island is set to be completed, this view will be filled by the skyline of new housing for 35,000 people

 

work to start on dredging for the construction of Lynetteholm

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At the end of 2021, the Danish Parliament passed a Construction Act for Lynetteholm and work on the new, man-made island across the entrance to the harbour will start later this month with extensive dredging that will remove sludge across the sea bed to form a stable base for the next stage when landfill will be brought in to create the island.

That sediment - estimated to be around 2.5 million tonnes across the sea bed - is described as "slightly polluted" so, presumably, that means that there is contamination from the harbour, contamination from shipping entering and leaving the harbour and pollution from the old ship yards on Refshaleøen.

‘Sludge’ will be taken south by barge to be dumped in the bay off the town of Køge. The Danish word used in the local press for this is 'klapning' or clapping but I'm not sure if that is the process or the term for the sludge. A recent article talked about the 'clapping area'.

When plans for Lynetteholm were first revealed in 2018, strong objections meant that the position for the new island was moved out further into the Sound so that there will be more open water around the Trekroner Fortet but not only will the man-made island now be further out into the deeper water of the Sound but it will be much bigger …. enlarged from 190 hectares in the last plans to 282 hectares in this, the most-recent proposal.

If you find hectares difficult to visualise, then the area of what is sometimes called the medieval city of Copenhagen - from the city hall to Kongens Nytorv and from Nørreport to Gammel Strand - is about 126 hectares so the new island will be over twice that area.

from Langelinie looking east - out to the Sound

at the centre is Trekroner Fortet - the Three Crowns Fortress - built in the 1780s to guard the entrance to the harbour
to the far left is the massive warehouse of UNICEF out at Nordhavn and the three white buildings are the cruise ship terminal
to the right the buildings are at the north end of Refshaleøen

the new island will fill the whole horizon with just a narrow channel in front of the cruise ship terminals for boats entering and leaving the inner harbour

Arguments for going ahead with the construction of the island have been well rehersed by By&Havn - the port authority and here the development company - and by politicians - both city politicians and ministers of the government.

The man-made island is needed to ensure that the city has somewhere to dump building waste from the city well into the future; the island will provide a dumping place for earth excavated in an extension to the metro system; the island is a crucial part of flood protection to prevent storm surges coming into the inner harbour and the island is an effective way to build an east bypass of the city - as a car tunnel can be laid across the sea bed, with the island built on top - and the island will create new land for housing as the city expands over the next 50 years ..... the island is set to be finished by 2070 with housing for 35,000.

What changed my view from vaguely for the island to uncertain and then increasingly against was a comment from a politician or a planner who was asked if the island would be car free from the outset. He said, to quote rather loosely, that the houses would be so expensive that you could not expect those people to live without a car. *

The real problem is that once you begin to look at the arguments for the island, they begin to seem circular and self supporting. The island is needed as a place to dump earth and rock from the construction of a new metro line but the next extension for the metro line is to go out to the island to serve all those new houses.

The housing will be so expensive because this is a city-financed development so they are obliged by law to get the maximum price for the new land and there also has to be additional profit from the land to pay for the metro that they have to build to serve the new houses because they would not be as attractive to new buyers or make as much profit if they did not have the metro and so on.

If there is actually a single coherent policy behind the construction of the island it's the generation of wealth through growth.

That's the shark theory of economic success. I'm not calling the developers sharks .... it's simply that it is said that if a shark stops swimming it drowns and, in the same way, the only criteria for judging the economic success of a city or a country is if they continue growing. Isn't there something to be said for some form of consolidation economics? .... a period of sorting out what you have to make it better rather than bigger? God forbid any one should mention not for profit sustainability.

Copenhagen, Amager and Saltholmen in the middle of the 19th century showing shallow marshes and mud flats in the bay south of the harbour and the map has the depth of the main channels in the Sound

 

looking out to Trekroner Fortet and the Sound beyond from the yacht marina at Langelinie ….
the new island of Lynetteholm will fill the whole of the horizon behind the fort …. from the cruise ship terminal on the far left to Refshaleøen on the right

 

There are obvious problems about proceeding with Lynetteholm that have not been addressed.

For a start, the new island will be hard up against the city sewage works and almost-certainly that will have to be moved but there is no agreement about who will pay for a new sewage works or any indication of a possible new site.

And there are increasing concerns about the impact the island will have on the ecology of the wider area or any certainty that it will not change tidal patterns now that it is to be larger and to be set further out into the Sound.

If the city is producing an almost-limitless amount of construction waste to be dumped out at sea, that implies planners anticipate an endless cycle of demolition and rebuilding. What happened to building sustainably? Surely a sustainable building is, by definition, one you don't demolish? Has the long-term policy of the city to build sustainably changed?

I have three specific concerns about the new island and I'm not sure they have been addressed.

First, as a historian, I can see only too clearly that Copenhagen is where it is and grew to be the financial and trading centre of the country and the region because it was an amazing harbour.

It was and is sheltered and protected by the island of Amager but was, never-the-less, open to the waters of the Sound. Surely the open and still obvious connection between the city and the Baltic is important .... maybe not physically but emotionally and that will be taken away.

On the trip here when I actually decided I wanted to move to Copenhagen was when I stayed in the Admiral Hotel and looked out of the window to watch the Oslo ferry docking and unloading at what is now Ofelia Plads. Will Copenhagen, cut off more and more from the Sound and the sea, be as vital?

Even now, without the island, I overhear tourists talking about crossing the ‘river’ to get from the centre to Christianshavn.

Second, and to be practical, it is very clear when you look at maps from the 18th and 19th centuries, that, as more and more land was built out into the south approach to the harbour, tidal water flowing through, between the city and Amager, was restricted and the bay slowly but surely silted up. It was a slow process - starting with the construction of Christianshavn on man-made islands in the early 17th century - but there is no longer a wide and open bay south of Langebro.

If Lynetteholm blocks the open entrance to the north harbour - with only a narrow channel left between the cruise ship terminal and the new island - then how quickly will the inner harbour and the canals silt up and will the water become stagnant and develop algae blooms?

Inevitably - even in Copenhagen - dirt and water and pollution runs off the streets and into the harbour and, when there is a bad storm, sewage overflows into the harbour. What will happen if less water is flowing in from the Sound to keep the harbour aerated?

 

are these stunning visualisations for the coastline of the new island feasible?
where are the 35,000 people who will live here and where are the people who will work here?

can there really be wide sandy beaches in shallow bays when the edge of the artificial island has been moved out into deeper water?

climate-change planning suggests that high and solid defences will have to be built across the south and east sides of Amager - just down the coast - to cope with the predicted rise in sea level and with high water from storm surges coming in across the Sound

 

My third concern about going ahead with Lynetteholm is probably more contentious and more difficult to argue.

Why is it inevitable that Copenhagen will continue to grow between now and 2070 and if it does grow then is that actually a positive thing? Why does the city need housing for 35,000 people on a new island?

It is often repeated that, month on month, a thousand new people move to Copenhagen but during the pandemic families actually moved away to the suburbs and the population of Copenhagen dropped for the first time as people wanted to be locked down with a garden and not locked down and trapped with their children in an inner-city apartment.

It's not to propose deliberate stagnation or decline for the city and certainly not to suggest there should be a city-full sign but when Copenhagen is selected year after year as one of the most pleasant and happiest cities in the World, that is, to a considerable extent, because it's a compact city.

The government already understands this as they try to move government departments out but Odense and Aarhus and Esbjerg and Aalborg all have the potential to be great but compact and sustainable cities.

A larger and larger percentage of the population of the World is now urban rather than rural but surely it is the rapidly-growing mega cities that have the real problems? Denmark is in a position to set the model for small cities as regional centres that bring back manufacturing and food production, whenever possible, and keep locally the ways they generate power and deal with waste.

* I can't find the article but, when I track it down, the reference will be added to the post

Lynetteholmen - a new island across the harbour February 2019
will Lynetteholm be constructed further out into the sound? 4 April 2020

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