From Maaspoort you can cycle over the dike along the Maas to old-Empel. You will then pass a monument that was placed there at the completion of the dike improvement of the Maaspoort dike section.
The Aa en Maas Water Board has a good habit of reserving money for art for major works. Because a lot of work has been done on the dikes in recent years, a number of new monuments have been created.
Such as the aforementioned work of art that was unveiled by Neelie Smit-Kroes in 1988. She was then Minister of Transport - talk about the passing of time. The Den Bosch artist Sander Dorenbosch designed the Maaspoort monument. There is a reason why it looks new.
It was recently rammed by a motorist, repaired and replaced. The artwork, which represents a cross-section of a dike, can be read literally. It reads: I lie here tightly and turn the water as it washes.
© Brabants Dagblad; Previously published in Een Ons Brabant on October 26, 2007.
Postscript: The monument consists of two parts: an inner form that represents the cross-section of a dike and a protective framework around it. In the cross-section you see the profile of the old dike in a brown steel type and the profile of the dike improvement above it in stainless steel.
Just as the real dike is protected by the water board, this inner form is protected by a framework of pipes.
The uprights represent the water board people, the horizontal pipes show the different water levels: a normal level, which did not cause any problems for the old dike; a higher water level for which the improved dike is intended and above that an extremely high water level, with which the artist wants to point out the impossibility of always keeping everything under control.