Will lessons be learnt?

Published: Thursday, 24 December 2020

I WONDER how many people have noticed that the steel pilling at the breaches on the Ashby and now the New Junction Canal at its junction with the Aire & Calder have prevented two major floods happening? Writes Keith Gudgin.

If all the water from the Ashby and upper end of the Coventry had been allowed to poor out it in a short time it would have been devastating for the local villages. The same with the water from the Aire & Calder.

Better than stupid coir rolls

It just goes to show that it is far better to place this steel piling in vulnerable places in preference to those stupid coir rolls or wooden posts with netting stretched between them?  It is absolutely obvious that neither of these two edging methods would stop the water gushing through and taking more banking with it!

At least the steel piling prevented the breaches from getting larger and larger by restricting the water flow.

It seems to have saved the Ashby Canal Association and Canal & River Trust quite a lot of work and money.  Far more than the cost of installing it!  The sheer fact that the pilings held the water pressure back would have given the engineers time to assess and repair the leaking banking before it breached.

The experience eye of a lengthsman

All it needed was the experienced eye of a lengthsman to spot that there was a problem, so that these dangerous situations with all the ensuing emergency work and expense now needed would have been prevented!

Problem is, CaRT, in their dubious infinite wisdom, have sacked all the lengthsmen so they can hire more directors on obscene salaries to oversee crackpot schemes costing obscene amounts of money that give no real benefit to the structure of the waterways.

Will 'lessons be learnt' from these two breaches?  I wouldn't bank on it! (Pun intended!)