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The cost would be too much to be practical.

The size of the submerged areas of Doggerland varies depending on how much you want to include. The range seems to vary wildly from 9,000 to 18,000 square miles. To put that amount of land reclamation into perspective, let’s look at the Netherlands. At nearly one sixth of the country’s entire territory, the Netherlands have reclaimed about 2,700 square miles of land.

From a magnitude perspective, that comparison actually makes it seem feasible. Unfortunately, you also need to consider depth.

The Zuiderzee in the Netherlands, on which the Flevoland was built, is only about 15 feet deep. During the time period where Doggerland was above water, the sea level was 400 feet lower. That’s an enormous difference that complicates both a land fill strategy as well as utilization of levees.

The Zuiderzee Works in the Netherlands cost $7 billion and decades to construct. Extrapolating this to a landmass that is anywhere from 3 to 6 times larger and 10-20 times deeper, you could very easily be looking at tens of trillions of dollars without even including yearly maintenance.

To make matters worse, you’re trying to reclaim land that is going to be harder to maintain with every passing year. Sea levels are rising once again… why spend this money to reclaim land that will be extraordinarily costly to protect when you could instead shore up land you’re already losing?