People That Involved in Building Canals

Brief:

Where are projects like this published and promoted?  Find sites that list similar projects and find their submission guidelines.

Who else has suggested canals through the UK? Make a list of names, websites, social media contacts.

Who are the experts on Canals? If we were to interview them, what questions would we ask? Make a list of 5-10 questions that you could ask each type of expert. Boris Johnson talked about it recently but dropped it.  Find more about this, find the people that were involved, write questions that we could ask them.

Lichfield & Hatherton Canals

Background:

The Lichfield and Hatherton canals are actually to separate canal. Restoration of them both will provide additional access to the presently underused northern parts of the Birmingham Canal navigation. The length of both of the Lichfield and the Hatherton canals are 7 miles, which is approximately 11.3 km. Along the Lichfield canal, there are 30 locks, information provided by Inland Waterways. (Inland Waterways 2021)

There were many obstacles that restoration needed to overcome. Roughly estimated, there were over £2 million had to invested in many major road crossings to preserve the continuity of the routes, which slows down the pace of restoration of the canals that are only made by volunteers.

An overview on restoration on Lichfield and Hatherton Canal:

Before getting in to the restoration project, the website starts off by introduce the background and some characteristics about the canals they decide to work on. Then, it follows the proposal on project site, and introduction of the routes. Because the restoration of canal project usually involving regional government, people, public and environment, etc, due to this many distinct disciplines, the construction of the project will need permission or permit from different agency and financial support. At last, such human engineering project will need to consider how much environmental impact would it generate. Awareness of responsibilities to the environment is required, and needs a more formal basis. Such as preparing environmental report that summarizes the route reservation scheme proposals before starting the project.Following that, the materials that used in the project is introduces and alternative is also given as a backup plan in case the first one did not work out.

Their Progress on Lichfield Canal:

There are many sites has the LHCRT works over, including the

  1. Tamworth Road Locks, which had two partly demolished locks rebuilt, wash walls reconstructed, a section of a land drain pipeline removed, a slipway built, and a pound relined and re-watered.
  2. Fesseways Health Towpath. The are many jobs has been done including modified canal and created a nature area. A large new turning basin had been mostly completed by the time of 2019. The towpath wall rebuilt, and a fosseway lock 18 the channel was re-excavated back to the road.
  3. Up to date, there are 5 active restoration sites according to the Inland waterways.                          

LHCRT Website: https://www.lhcrt.org.uk

Contact information:

President: Eric Wood                                        Chairperson: Christine Bull

Email: eric.wood@ihcrt.org.uk                       Email: chairman@Ihcrt.org.uk

Social Media:

They are on Facebook, Instagram, twitter and YouTube.

Interview questions:

  • As the president of such organization devoted to water projects that benefits people and environment, what are some important messages that you want to share with people to promote more of them join in?
  • I noticed that many of the work within this project are done or will be done by volunteers. Would it be realistic to do so?
  • By the time the canal has been done and becomes the part of the canal network in nation, who is going to manage the canal, how can we make sure that the canal can bring the proposed benefits to people?
  • What exactly will the canal bring to the environment, people and public by the time it is done?
  • What is some obstacle that has been overcome? How did you guys solve it? What can we learn from it?
  • Could you provide some genuine advice for more organizations that wants to work on waterways projects as well?

Boris Johnson: Move Welsh and Scottish water to England

Boris Johnson supporting idea of moving water from Wales to England where water supply become the most controversial subject across the UK. This idea was first suggested by him in 2011, and his idea stated that the most obvious solution is to use the rain from the mountain to alleviate the water supply shortage in urban areas.

Approved by the professor Roger Falconer who is from Cardiff University, both London Mayer and professor Roger Falconer agree that it is possible and practicable to move water from Scotland to areas of water shortage in south and east of England via canal and other waterways.

According to Johnson, the principle of gravity would bring surplus rain from the higher up mountain in Scotland and Wale to lower land in south and east England to irrigate and refresh the land and country. Professor Falconer had also looked at all sorts of proposals for improving canal network so to provide more exhaustive water supply across the nation. Further details about the proposal later added by Mr. Johnson and professor Falconer through there discussion, they discussed about linking up Welsh mountain reservoirs via Wye and the Servern with the Thames, or sending water from the seven and the Trent round to east Anglia, for many years the driest part of the Country. (Johnson 2011)

Ever since this idea came out, it brought many social and water companies’ objections. Some doubt the efficiency of the work, while some warned that it would be a mistake to mix up water from Wales with the Thames River. Despite many critics and dispute over the subject, Mr. Johnson seems did not bothered and he had been contacting with Professor Falconer and spoke for about an hour about research on this project and discussed if they should comment further. According to Professor Falconer, there will be supply problems ahead.

There are a few factors that would accelerate the process of drying out of freshwater.

  1. The increasing nonstop population growth would definitely out pressure on supplies.
  2. Climate change is alos adding more pressure to the water crisis in future UK.

The world population is projected to go from 6 million to 9 billion and the core problem is that most people is not aware that this is happening everywhere countries around the world, not ony confined in developing countries. As an example, UK population has grown rapidly recent decades, and this had worsened the availability of water supplies.

“We’re going to go from [a population of] 60m to 70m over the next 10 to 20 years. “said Mr. Johnson, moving water from north to the south would be one way to address this issue.In the past, one of the options has been suggested is to raised dams, release more water in the summer into rivers like the Wye and the Seven and pipe it to the Trent, for example, then down through the Birmingham, canals down to the River Thames releasing it into the upper part of the River Thames down into London.

Setting up a national water grid to transport water throughout the UK is “a government problem,” according to Welsh Water, and it “would need to satisfy the ecological issues that may be encountered in mixing water from various locations with large quality variations.” And water firms would be able to “trade” water from one location to another via the water industry’s network of pipelines.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-13765279