Zeeland seeks new name for Hedwigepolder after depoldering

The province of Zeeland is looking for a new name for the Hertogin Hedwigepolder. “Westerly Scheldt water has been flowing through the area again for six months and it is no longer actually a polder,” says Wyanda Schop of the province at Broadcasting Zeeland. “That’s why we really want to give it a new name.”

The Duchess Hedwige Polder is perhaps the most controversial part of the Netherlands. And that while it was certainly not the largest and not the oldest polder in the Netherlands.

It was not until 1907 that the area on the border with Belgium was drained and used as an agricultural area. The Balkenende II cabinet decided in 2005 that nature compensation should be introduced for the damage caused by the deepening of the shipping channel to Antwerp.

Depoldering of the Hedwigepolder was considered, but the discussion about this led in 2009 to the fact that the Balkenende IV cabinet decided not to flood the Hedwigepolder.

A year later, the Rutte-I cabinet promised to look for an alternative area to compensate for the lost nature. Countless ideas and legal proceedings followed. At the same time, the Flemish government insisted that at least something was done. Initially with little result. It was not until 2019 that the Rutte III cabinet decided to depolder the Hedwigepolder after all. In October 2022, the dike with the Western Scheldt was excavated in such a way that the water flowed in again.

“It’s fine if people want to keep calling it the Hedwige,” says Schop of the province now. But a new name is welcome. “Anyone can put it forward. Everything is allowed. There are no requirements that such a name must meet.”

Omroep Zeeland already asked listeners for suggestions and discovered that old pain is still alive. What about potential names such as Gestolenpolder, The great sorrow, Het Boerenverdriet or the Verkwanseldepolder? Also striking: the Peijspolder (after Karla Peijs, who was the Queen’s Commissioner in Zeeland until 2013) or the Pfaspolder (after the pollution with carcinogenic PFAs compounds by the 3M factory, which is right across the border in Belgium)?

Schop can laugh about it, but still kindly requests that you come up with ‘rather something positive’ when naming it. “We’re looking for something that allows us to put the past behind us,” she says. “You can also think of something with ‘drowned’, that is of course possible. Or something positive, ‘Nieuw-Saeftinghe’ for example, that has also been suggested.”

Entries are welcome until May 29 at the website van Grenspark Groot Saeftinghe, the management organization in which the province of Zeeland cooperates with a number of neighboring Belgian municipalities.