Unkown contribution

Its a balance of ecology/Environment, cost efficiencies and regulation to balance the best environmental solution, value for money and compliance, i use the word balance because non of the 3 listed items please everyone. The cost of spreading to land has gone up massively over the years with landowners and agents want an arm and a leg to accept dredgings that will add nutrients/fertilize their land and benift soils ans crops.

I think you are quite right Richard, once a problem is reported it is flagged on their system as a customer complaint, these are used to plan future works (along with surveys), if there not flagged up and logged, they wont get done.

When you say the winding hole at the southern end of the tunnel, are you refering to the enterance to the old disused tunnel?

The section from the north portal to the next lock downstream were all dredged, winding holes, moorings and part of the lower section of the Macc were also dredged i believe.

Thank you, sometimes being unkown is for the best

mysterious ?.

Tipping ash into the canal has been common practice for many years, as already stated, this practice can change the Ph values of the canal due to the alkaline levels of the ash and therefore can affect the wildlife and fish. It can also have an adverse affect on the silt analysis process during dredging investigations, C&RT have to analyse the silt before reviewing disposal options, non hazardous material can sometimes prove to be a benifit to agricultural land and be a very cost effective means of disposal and benifit the land (and more dredging (length and volume) gets completed as a result of this). Ash contains Benzo Pyrene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzopyrene) and can make a non hazardous silt become hazardous over time, greatly incresing the dredging costs (or getting less dredged for the budget). The last point (and i guess a little bit finiky) is that by tipping ash in to the canal you are technically fly-tipping!