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Calder & Hebble lIkely to be closed for 12 months


Alan de Enfield

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Not seen this anywhere else on the forum, so lifted from NBW

 

 

Calder & Hebble closed for 12 months

Published: Wednesday, 19 February 2020

THE Canal & River Trust tell that the Calder & Hebble Navigation will be closed for 12 months!

Damage to the Figure of Three locks on the navigation by Storm Ciara that swept across the country on Sunday 10th February will close the navigation, Keith Gudgin reports.

Figure OfThreeClosed for foreseeable future

The Trust states 'As a result of damage caused by Storm Ciara, Figure of Three locks will be closed for the foreseeable future'.

It goes on to state that its teams are working to fully asses the damage and are designing a programme of works to bring the locks back into operation.

Shock news

Then comes the shock news that our initial estimates are this may take up to a period of 12 months.

There are no details, as is now usual, of the damage caused to the locks or what is needed to put them back in working order, just the words 'Structure failure'.

No access

This closure means that there will be no access between either the Rochdale or Huddersfield canals and the Aire & Calder, Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation or the Trent for a year.

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Since the C&H is now getting trashed by floods on a regular basis it makes sense to take the time and see what can be done to reduce the risk that the rebuild won't be destroyed again at the next "100 year" flood as soon as it reopens. That may not necessarily be a straight rebuild of what was there before.

 

Jen

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44 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Since the C&H is now getting trashed by floods on a regular basis it makes sense to take the time and see what can be done to reduce the risk that the rebuild won't be destroyed again at the next "100 year" flood as soon as it reopens. That may not necessarily be a straight rebuild of what was there before.

 

Jen

This makes much sense even if it means a delay of two years. There will be heritage issues to overcome.

Increasing numbers of big floods are going to overwhelm CRT's budget and lead them to abandon navigation on some waterways (Northern canals and some rivers) unless a good longer term plan can be devised. All this cycle path stuff is a threat as its much easier to re-purpose (or even re-imagine ?) a waterway than to totally close it.

 

I really hope government money is available for this as it could be seen as flood defence rather than just maintenance.

 

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

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6 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Not seen this anywhere else on the forum, so lifted from NBW

 

 

Calder & Hebble closed for 12 months

 

There are no details, as is now usual, of the damage caused to the locks or what is needed to put them back in working order, just the words 'Structure failure'.

 

NBW being their usual uninformed selves, when even here there have been photos of the damage that has occured.
Still, they seem to find any excuse to blame CaRT.

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1 hour ago, Graham Davis said:

NBW being their usual uninformed selves, when even here there have been photos of the damage that has occured.
Still, they seem to find any excuse to blame CaRT.

I think their point is that C&RT have not shown or mentioned the damage - simply saying  "structural failure" which could be a balance beam broken, a paddle broken, or the complete lock being washed away.

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6 hours ago, Dav and Pen said:

It depends how many elf and safety studies as well as environmental impact assessments they decide to carry out. If it was still a commercial waterway with customers queuing up it could be started tomorrow. 

H&S is to protect the workers repairing not the customers - so no

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In the Boxing Day 2015 floods there was damage to the bank between the river and the pound between the two Figure of Three locks with debris swept into the canal, but as far as I recall, no damage to the locks. There have been a number of other times that the river has overtopped the bank washing gravel etc. into the canal.

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11 hours ago, Nick G said:

See the Pennine Waterways website for photos and more details.

 

http://waterwaynews.blogspot.com/2020/02/calder-and-hebble-closed-for-12-months.html?m=1

Having seen the pictures in the above link, it's not suprising there is a long lead time being quoted, there's not much left to work with.

 

Bod.

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The atmosphere is warming, warm air hold more water, this drops out in fiercer storms, hence what was classified as a "once in hundred years" seems to be "once in 5 years" if Tod, Hebden and Mytholmroyd are anything to go by.
This means that EA and CRT need to do even more work, preventive maintenance etc.
At figure of three the bywash on the far side of the second lock has gone. The river sweeps round a bend and overtops the bank between the two locks, dumping gravel in the small pound and into and below the second lock. Had the bywash been checked and maintained? If not did the flood lift out loose stones and then the scouring started.
Once the gravel has been dredged it could be used to fill the void, fewer materials to be brought to site.

Boxing day 15 the river did the same thing, over topping the bank, but it only scoured out the towpath a bit and silted the canal. The mechanics of the flood flow around the area are obvious, not enough has been done since to make the locks and bywashes more flood resistant.

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50 minutes ago, matty40s said:

They need to create a new ox-bow lake, redirect the river in a straighter direction across the  derelict shunting yards and designate the new area a Wellness Retreat for anglers, cyclists and naturalists.

That's prime building land! 

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1 hour ago, matty40s said:

They need to create a new ox-bow lake, redirect the river in a straighter direction across the  derelict shunting yards and designate the new area a Wellness Retreat for anglers, cyclists and naturalists.

And naturists if the planet is getting warmer. 

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21 hours ago, Dav and Pen said:

It depends how many elf and safety studies as well as environmental impact assessments they decide to carry out. If it was still a commercial waterway with customers queuing up it could be started tomorrow. 

 

Watch this video of the damage then tell us that again.

 

https://www.facebook.com/100001423796364/videos/2956937844363646/UzpfSTEyODQ4OTI3NjY6Vks6MjU3ODc2MjMwNTczNTM3NQ/

 

Here are stills from the video.

 

image.png.83ecea87aa472deff5b54e8057fbaa68.png

 

image.png.0540c4f5cbcd4bc75cebeea97ae0aad7.png

 

 

image.png.26e6e54ba63973336f9396d54ef24efd.png

Edited by Onionman
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11 hours ago, Jim Riley said:

The atmosphere is warming, warm air hold more water, this drops out in fiercer storms, hence what was classified as a "once in hundred years" seems to be "once in 5 years" if Tod, Hebden and Mytholmroyd are anything to go by.
This means that EA and CRT need to do even more work, preventive maintenance etc.
At figure of three the bywash on the far side of the second lock has gone. The river sweeps round a bend and overtops the bank between the two locks, dumping gravel in the small pound and into and below the second lock. Had the bywash been checked and maintained? If not did the flood lift out loose stones and then the scouring started.
Once the gravel has been dredged it could be used to fill the void, fewer materials to be brought to site.

Boxing day 15 the river did the same thing, over topping the bank, but it only scoured out the towpath a bit and silted the canal. The mechanics of the flood flow around the area are obvious, not enough has been done since to make the locks and bywashes more flood resistant.

The lock chambers, gates and walls seem to be reasonably intact. It's getting the water course dredged, the by-wash areas rebuilt and some resilience to prevent further flood damage that's going to be the bigger problem. Maybe possible to get restricted passage sooner than they are predicting. (where's the praying hands emoji when you need it?)

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I’m in agreement with @Dav and Pen. If there were punitive costs to the infrastructure manager for having the facility out of use to commercial customers the repair work would have started last week. There’s plenty to do before any work on rebuilding the permanent canal infrastructure would take place. Access agreements, haul roads, site compounds and then clearing the debris that’s been washed in to the channel. If it were an operational railway that stuff would start immediately. I’m sure that’s happened over the past week.

 

But none of that applies so I think we should be grateful that we live in a country that has laws that compel the infrastructure manager to ultimately repair it despite it being of no direct commercial value to the economy. Proof we live in a pretty civilised place. We should always retain a degree of gratitude that the inland waterways are retained as a leisure facility.

 

JP

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Global warming is definitely happening, but it is too simplistic to assume that that means warmer weather for us in Britain.  Our current weather is within "normal" variations over the last 1000 years, possibly without global warming, so when the full impact of global warming arrives, it may take a different form to what we see now.  What I am trying to say, somewhat imperfectly, is the next big round of weather resisting measures should not be solely aimed at high volumes of water coming down as rain but should also allow for it coming down as snow.   AIUI.

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44 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

What I am trying to say, somewhat imperfectly, is the next big round of weather resisting measures should not be solely aimed at high volumes of water coming down as rain but should also allow for it coming down as snow.  

Yes there is a body of opinion that 'global warming' will actually mean that the UK gets MUCH colder.

The theory being that as the Arctic ice shelf melts the fresh water will alter the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift will no longer run up our West coast.

As we are on the same latitude as Canada & Alaska we will get their sort of weather.

 

 

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I believe that the waterways do have a direct commercial value to the local economy and many surveys show this. Even in the dark ages of the 1960s when bwb were determined to and did close navigations  it was shown that many village shops kept going because of water tourism in all its forms. This is even more vital now.

The current guardians of the system have a duty to keep the navigations open ,even if they act as if it is their secondary purpose.

All over the system culverts are silted  up or blocked and with the demise of the local lengthsmen the current management do not even know where some of them are until something happens. I know a lengthsmqn who was made redundant and then asked later if he would tell them where all the culverts and suspect places were on his length.

I have long thought that we need to go back to local river and drainage boards whose sole function is to look after their catchment areas and take the function away from central control and politicians. It seems to have worked on the Somerset levels.

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Dav and Pen said:

I have long thought that we need to go back to local river and drainage boards whose sole function is to look after their catchment areas and take the function away from central control and politicians. It seems to have worked on the Somerset levels.

 

The IDBs control 10x the length o waterways that C&RT (try) to maintain. They work in many more areas that just Somerset.

 

https://www.ada.org.uk/member_type/idbs/

 

Today, there are 112 IDBs in England whose districts cover 1.2 million hectares (9.7% England’s landmass). They play a key role in reducing flood risk to over 600,000 people and nearly 900,000 properties. They operate and maintain over 500 pumping stations, 22,000 km of watercourse, 175 automatic weed screen cleaners and numerous sluices and weirs.

For information about drainage districts in Wales and Scotland click here.

 

The local Drainage board(s) to us :

 

website_lincolnshire_idbs2.png

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