Dodo weblog 2007

A BREAKTHROUGH!

An hour before nightfall we managed to get the excavation pit dry. Rene Floore and the crane driver placed the last sheet-piles and started the pumps. And twenty minutes later the water level in the pit already lowered 10 centimeters. So our selfconstructed dam functions beyond our expectations. This is quite a critical moment, because if we failed we could not start the excavation. Rene used corrugated iron (roof plates) to construct the dam around the 2 x 2 meters sized excavation pit. The crane driver pushed them deep into the soft soil of Mare aux Songes swamp.

However, soon it turned out that we could not fit the sheets water tight to each other. Fortunately we encountered a company that could deliver water tight clay and with it we could close the seems. First the clay composition was analysed by Kenneth. If it contained undesired substance there was a risk to contaminate the virginal marsh and this would inevitably influence our crime scene investigation results.

Around the pit 15 kubic meters of the clay was carefully dumped by the crane. By doing so a Dutch mini-polder was created in the middle of the tropical marsh! After a week of hard work we can finally start excavating.