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Is this the thin end of the wedge ?


Alan de Enfield

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1 minute ago, The Dreamer said:

Not complacent, and appreciate that boats will always need to lobby, and also need to prove our worth.

 

This I accept, in so much as the reservoirs are needed to maintain water depth, however the failure of a reservoir and the associated liability impacts all users of the network, not just boaters.

It is the boats going through the locks that really use the water, so building a weir in the lock chamber maintains the water level for fishing and the for the walkers to look at but requires much less water. It was pretty much standard practice when the canals were abandoned.

You can also put less attractive urban stretches into big pipes and build shops and houses on the land. whilst keeping a bit of water flow to the pretty bits.

 

An increasing percentage of the new boats coming to the canals are happy to remain almost static or cruise over a very limited range.

In Birmingham a section of canal has already bean narrowed to make more space for cyclists.

 

...............Dave

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17 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I too believe that over the short to medium term C&RT will increase prices, reduce services and gradually 'force' boaters off the water.

Do you have a timescale for that?

Sounds like it could be sooner rather than later.

 

 

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Well if they ban diesel engines that will have a big impact on usage. maybe small battery powered day boats with solar charging or you own mooring with power. The likes of me are not going to spend weeks doing 4 or 5 hours a day in 18 tons of steel when that happens

 

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21 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Is that the plan ?

 

Yup - it was announced earlier this year.

It is a Government initiative (not C&RT) called "Clean Maritime Plan' there will be NO boats allowed in UK waters (Inland or sea) that are powered by internal combustion engines.

 

By 2035 there will be no new boats allowed to be built that have ICE's.

 

There was a consultation for all interested parties at the end of last year.

 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/815664/clean-maritime-plan.pdf

50 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Do you have a timescale for that?

Sounds like it could be sooner rather than later.

 

 

In combination with HM Government initiatives 15 years and total lack of ICE boats by 2050

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15 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

In combination with HM Government initiatives 15 years and total lack of ICE boats by 2050

It's a time of great change.

I will not rush to sell my boat just yet.

 

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27 minutes ago, Nightwatch said:

86,000 bins?? Really? 3000 miles of navigation?

Maybe it is 86,000 'empties' or to put another way - 1653 bins each emptied once a week (wonderful thing manipulation of figures).

 

 

The Canal & River Trust has released its annual report showing boaters the importance of licence fees in keeping the inland waterways flowing smoothly.

A fifth of the charity’s funding comes from licences and moorings, enabling works such as dredging, culvert and towpath repair, replacing lock gates and providing pump out facilities and emptying the canalside bins.

The trust’s income last year was £210m with licences and mooring fees making up £40.2m. The main sources of funding come from investment and property income of £53.4m and the Defra grant (£51.3m). The total expenditure in 2018/19 was £201m with day-to-day operations and waterway assets costing the most at £37.8m and £26.4m respectively.

 

Projects and repairs

A further £23.8m was spent on major infrastructure works such as repairing bridges, grouting lock chambers or repairing culverts. The trust took on 130 major projects during this period and conducted 800 planned repairs. Through its planned stoppage projects 1,000 defects were fixed and 137 lock gates repaired. These projects are against a daily backdrop of responding to incidents, providing assistance and keeping water supplies at the right levels as well as looking after vegetation.

 

The trust also responded to 117,500 calls from customers as well as rescuing one million fish and emptying 86,000 bins.

 

The Trust cares for the 2,000 miles of inland waterways across England and Wales, ensuring the 35,000 boaters and millions of visitors per year can continue to enjoy the water. It looks after 1,589 locks with around four million lockages per year. It also cares for 72 reservoirs, most of which are around 200 years old.

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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Alan, I don't doubt the figure you quoted. But I do doubt CRT's figure. Seems a lot of bins to me. This would obviously take in 'all' bins including small bins in car parks etc.

 

 

2 minutes ago, MartynG said:

the number of bins stated may be the number emptied per year?  

Good point. I'm calming down now!!

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On ‎06‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 11:14, bagginz said:

This ^

 

An obvious and reasonably cheap measure that would prevent *most* of the abuse. 

Really. You believe that.  All that will happen is the lock will be broken off and then a cost to replace OR the rubbish bag just gets thrown over the fence, causing a mess then rats and yet another bill.  

 

 

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C&RT seem to be under the impression that if they remove the litter bins the [problem of litter will 'go away'.

 

 

 

 

Canal & River Trust (CRT) aims to solve litter problems on East London waterways – by reducing the number of bins along their paths.

The Trust, which manages 80 per-cent of waterways including the River Lea which passes through Hackney, plans to remove 40 per-cent of litter bins from towpaths nationally.

In a recent meeting between London National Bargee Travellers Association (LNBTA) and CRT, Sam Thomas, CRT’s London Customer Operations Manager said: “there is equal evidence for and against having less bins”.

CRT plans to keep the bins in storage and only reinstate them if litter continues to be a problem.

In response to the announcement, Marcus Trower, Deputy Chair of the LNBTA said: “When CRT told us about their plans to take away 40 per-cent of bins to reduce litter, I thought they were joking.”

When challenged by the anti-litter campaign group, Keep Britain Tidy, CRT blamed the ‘mistreatment’ of bins as a justifiable reason to remove them.

CRT said: “In London, a number of litter bins along the towpath were being mistreated and were being used by people to fly tip…this means the bins in question were overflowing.

“People walking along the towpath will have to carry their litter a little further to put it in a bin, or maybe even take it home.”

Keep Britain Tidy has described the move as ‘concerning’. Many have suggested that emptying the bins more often would be a more common sense approach to reducing the problem of bins over-flowing.

 

https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2017/06/20/river-lea-litter-fewer-bins-concern-canal-trust/

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56 minutes ago, Dustin Wright said:

"An obvious and reasonably cheap measure that would prevent *most* of the abuse." 

 

Really. You believe that.  All that will happen is the lock will be broken off and then a cost to replace OR the rubbish bag just gets thrown over the fence, causing a mess then rats and yet another bill.  

 

 

Of course I believe what I wrote!   Most not all.   See my post #32 for more detail. 

 

Not all of us are extreme pessimists that exaggerate to make their point. 

 

Quote

"All that will happen is the lock will be broken off and then a cost to replace OR the rubbish bag just gets thrown over the fence, causing a mess then rats and yet another bill.  

 

Edited by bagginz
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Barmy. If CART's chap really believes all this, perhaps he should be sent to the bin.

(I'm referring to the content of the piece quoted in post 66).

Edited by Athy
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23 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

C&RT seem to be under the impression that if they remove the litter bins the [problem of litter will 'go away'.

 

Canal & River Trust (CRT) aims to solve litter problems on East London waterways – by reducing the number of bins along their paths.

https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2017/06/20/river-lea-litter-fewer-bins-concern-canal-trust/

I thought I was reading a piece from "The Onion"

 

Still, it must be fun living in fantasy world where you can wish physical problems away using a homeopathic approach.

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19 hours ago, cuthound said:

The company I used to.work for operated an incinerator in Slough.

 

By gradually heating it up, they could recover different metals because each metal melts at a different temperature.

 

The wastevheat was used to make steam to drive a turbine to make electricity to sell back to the national grid.

 

They used to obtain rubbish to burn by charging local authorities less than the landfill tax.

 

They also bought food waste and put it in an aerobic digester, which gave off methane. This was used to drive a spark compression generator, which made electricity to sell back to the national grid.

I made a video years ago for a company who made a ‘generator in a container’. They could plonk the thing onto a land fill waste dump, plumb it up to the pre-arranged piping, and have it generating electricity from the waste methane all in a single day. They found it to be a really hard sell to short-sighted local councils. 


Of course today, food waste is composted; but at that time everything used to go into the same hole in the ground. 

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2 hours ago, WotEver said:

I made a video years ago for a company who made a ‘generator in a container’. They could plonk the thing onto a land fill waste dump, plumb it up to the pre-arranged piping, and have it generating electricity from the waste methane all in a single day. They found it to be a really hard sell to short-sighted local councils. 


Of course today, food waste is composted; but at that time everything used to go into the same hole in the ground. 

 

2 hours ago, WotEver said:

I made a video years ago for a company who made a ‘generator in a container’. They could plonk the thing onto a land fill waste dump, plumb it up to the pre-arranged piping, and have it generating electricity from the waste methane all in a single day. They found it to be a really hard sell to short-sighted local councils. 


Of course today, food waste is composted; but at that time everything used to go into the same hole in the ground. 

In Ye Olden Days all rubbish was put in holes in the ground, but the Local Authorities ran out of suitable landfill sites, only at that stage did we start "re-cycling"

These sites are now sports grounds and housing estates. 

Edited by LadyG
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It seems whatever C&RT do it receives objections from this forum. 

 

The removal of bins to reduce abuse  fly tipping is clearly an experiment. 

People who think it will not succeed may themselves be potential fly tippers ?

 

The presence if a small bin may act as a sign to say dump your rubbish here. The empty space does not attract tipping of rubbish any more than any other spot.

 

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14 minutes ago, MartynG said:

It seems whatever C&RT do it receives objections from this forum. 

 

The removal of bins to reduce abuse  fly tipping is clearly an experiment. 

People who think it will not succeed may themselves be potential fly tippers ?

 

The presence if a small bin may act as a sign to say dump your rubbish here. The empty space does not attract tipping of rubbish any more than any other spot.

 

But the 400,000,000 visits per annum by 'non-boaters' will surely require somewhere to deposit their Maccy D wrappers etc.

Removing bins would (I'd suggest) just result in more thrown in the canal or just dropped on the tow-path, few people these days seem to be responsible enough to "take it home".

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