Rotterdam’s Koningshaven Bridge in the Netherlands, which local people call “De Hef”, is no longer in use. It’s an old bridge that was damaged by bombing during World War II. But it’s important to many people in Rotterdam. When the city planned to take the bridge down in the 1990s, many people complained. Instead, the city fixed the bridge up and left it in place as a monument.
Jeff Bezos, who created the internet shopping company Amazon, is one of the richest people in the world. He bought a yacht(游艇) from Oceanco. The yacht will be 417 feet (127 meters) long and 40 meters tall. It’s expected to cost more than 500 million dollars. It will be the world’s largest yacht. The yacht must go under the bridge. That’s a problem for the boat building company Oceanco. The bridge is not tall enough! So the boat company has asked the city to take the central part of the bridge down to allow the sailing boat to pass through.
The city government plans to rebuild the bridge afterward. Oceanco will have to pay for all the work done to the bridge. The work is expected to take a few weeks sometime this summer. Many people are upset about a historic monument being taken apart for a rich person’s yacht.
A person speaking for the mayor defended the city’s position, saying that the Koningshaven river is the only path the sailboat can take to the sea. The mayor’s office also pointed out that both the boat work and the work on the bridge are providing a lot of jobs for local people.
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