Breached canal could reopen in time for Christmas

A canal which suffered a serious breach last winter could reopen by this Christmas.

The Canal and River Trust plans to start repair work on a section of the Llangollen Canal soon and said it had had to cut other projects in order to find the money to pay for it.

Two canal boats fell into a deep trench caused by the breach near Whitchurch in Shropshire, while others were left stranded when water gushed out into a nearby field.

Simon Harding, from the trust, said the timetable for the repairs could be affected by the weather as well as if anything unexpected was revealed by survey work.

He said contractors were making the most of the dry weather and boring 20m (66ft) holes in the earth to understand the geology of the area.

There was an "awful lot of building work" to do, he said, with approximately 10,000 cubic metres of material to move.

That rebuilding would start "soon" he added, and would involve a technique called "reinforced earth".

He described it as being "like a plastic grid that we use to build a sandwich with granular fill".

The canal channel itself would be rebuilt with concrete, he added.

Since the canal burst its bank on 22 December, the trust said it had pumped 15 million litres of water out of an neighbouring field.

Because the canal usually supplied a reservoir for 60,000 homes, it had also had to keep the flow of water running until the canal could be refilled.

Harding said that was the trust's main focus of attention and it had used six pumps to keep the reservoir supplied.

The cost of powering those pumps and of the repairs was going to be high and he said: "We've had to cut other projects, change programmes and deal with this disaster."

Harding said it would be good if they could hit their target of getting the canal reopened by the first anniversary of the breach.

But he said wet weather could "slow us down seriously".

"There's always unforeseen circumstances, when you're digging in the ground you don't know what you're going to find," he added.

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