All across the country local water bodies have reported small cracks in the dikes. At one polder -- land reclaimed from the sea -- near the town of Waddinxveen in the western Netherlands, work was underway Thursday to stop the leaks.

"These are peat dykes with clay and sand on top. When it is too dry the peat works like a sponge. It shrinks, it sags and can no longer carry the weight of the clay and this causes cracks and the subsidence," Gonny van Alewijk of the local water council, which oversees the system of dikes and polders, told AFP.

In a suburb of Waddinxveen the houses face a five-meter (16-feet) high bank. On the crest, a small canal allows water to flow to a pumping station that pumps it to a bigger canal and finally to the Rhine river.

The canal is filled with water lilies and along the banks insects buzz around the reeds in the afternoon heat. It seems like an idyllic scene but "if the dike breaks there will be lot of damage below," Jasper Vink explained, pointing to homes nearby built five metres lower.

With his colleague Willem Elstgeest, Vinks works to reinforce the dike by adding another layer of clay.

On the part of the bank the men are working on, a local dike inspector --vigilant in these times of record high temperatures and drought-- found a small crack three days ago.

"Nothing big, several, several centimeters deep over a length of about half a meter," Van Alewijk of the local water council said.

However, this is a warning sign, even if the danger of floods is not imminent it is time to intervene to avert disaster.

Jasper Vink and Willem Elstgeest don't seem to be rattled by the flood risk.

"We do this work six months a year. A dike is never finished. You have the subsidence that occurs naturally, the vegetation and the climate take their toll," Elstgeest said.

"A simple muskrat can pose a threat. Image the water leak that could be caused by a tunnel of several centimeters high, drenched with water for several months before it is noticed," his colleague Vink added.

Over 60 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level. If it was not protected by an intricate system of dams and dikes it would flood regularly.

The inspection of over 17,500 kilometers (10,100 miles) of dunes, dikes, dams and embankments is a job for specialists.

By covering a part of the dike with clay the workers in Waddinxveen reinforce the fragile parts of the dike while at the same time restoring some of the humidity needed for the peat. The weight of the clay on the banks offsets the weight of the water in the canal.

"The ideal situation would be two or three days of a calm but constant rain so that the water has the time to penetrate the lower layers and give the dike back its flexibility," Van Alewijk explained.

It looks like she will have to wait. Since July 19 the Netherlands is officially on its second heatwave of the year and there is a drought. The occasional thunder storms won't be enough to drench the earth.

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