Leeds/Liverpool - Water Extraction during Stoppages?

[Doorman]

Can anyone please explain the rationale from BW for allowing two farmers to draw water from the Leeds/Liverpool canal, between bridges 27a and 20a, during the last four weeks, when the levels of the canal were at such a poor state?

[magpie patrick]

Can anyone please explain the rationale from BW for allowing two farmers to draw water from the Leeds/Liverpool canal, between bridges 27a and 20a, during the last four weeks, when the levels of the canal were at such a poor state?

 

almost certainly historic abstraction agreement that BW are powerless to revoke

[Doorman]

almost certainly historic abstraction agreement that BW are powerless to revoke

 

Cheers,

 

Just goes to show, they had fools running the canals back then too!

[Pluto]

Cheers,

 

Just goes to show, they had fools running the canals back then too!

Historically, the Liverpool Pool was always well supplied because of the volume of coal traffic from the Wigan area to Liverpool's canalside gas works. The canal company made a significant amount of money from water sales, though most was used for cooling the exhaust from steam engines to create a vacuum, and this water had to be returned to the canal. The warmed water encouraged children to swim in the canal, so it's probably a good job that steam engines are no longer used.

 

Canals have always been an important local source of water as most towns would not have had a piped water supply at the time canals first opened. When the L&LC opened to Blackburn - it's the 200th anniversary in June and the L&LCS will be taking heritage boat Kennet to Eanam on the 19th to commemorate the event - one local brewery was prosecuted for using canal water, though I'm sure it put some body in the beer.

[DHutch]

The thing is, while clearly its not ideal, the farmer still needs water even if the levels are low and if he has the right to it, through paying or otherwise, he was the right to it. Why should he then not take it, risking his business and livelihood, for the sake of what is ultimately a leisure activity.

[Doorman]

The thing is, while clearly its not ideal, the farmer still needs water even if the levels are low and if he has the right to it, through paying or otherwise, he was the right to it. Why should he then not take it, risking his business and livelihood, for the sake of what is ultimately a leisure activity.

 

Fair point, the farmer probably has the right, as Magpie Patrick states, through some historic law to draw water from the canal, which cannot be revoked and as you mention, in the main the canals are presently used as a leisure activity. The irony is, that as the farmer extracts water from the canal, BW have to draw water from the River Douglas in order to maintain navigatable levels.

[Pluto]

Fair point, the farmer probably has the right, as Magpie Patrick states, through some historic law to draw water from the canal, which cannot be revoked and as you mention, in the main the canals are presently used as a leisure activity. The irony is, that as the farmer extracts water from the canal, BW have to draw water from the River Douglas in order to maintain navigatable levels.

As successor to the L&LC, who obtained the right when they purchased the Douglas Navigation, BW have the right to water from the Douglas. The amount they could extract was reduced when Rivington Reservoirs were built by Liverpool Corporation c1860, and the authorised extraction at Scholes was equal to ten lockfulls per day. Water could also be fed into the canal by the equalising lock at Dean, though when this was closed the supply entered the canal via a pipe below Appley Lock.

[Doorman]

As successor to the L&LC, who obtained the right when they purchased the Douglas Navigation, BW have the right to water from the Douglas. The amount they could extract was reduced when Rivington Reservoirs were built by Liverpool Corporation c1860, and the authorised extraction at Scholes was equal to ten lockfulls per day. Water could also be fed into the canal by the equalising lock at Dean, though when this was closed the supply entered the canal via a pipe below Appley Lock.

 

Not really debating the legality of where the water is drawn from to maintain the levels, just the irony!

 

Very impressed with your knowledge of the canal's history though.

[Pluto]

Not really debating the legality of where the water is drawn from to maintain the levels, just the irony!

 

Very impressed with your knowledge of the canal's history though.

I should have said the disused lock at Dean was a regulating lock rather than equalising. It was authorised by the L&LC 1770 Act as part of a scheme to allow Douglas Navigation sailing flats to continue down the navigation without lowering their masts after the canal aqueduct at Parbold was built. A flight of locks down to the Douglas below the aqueduct would have completed the scheme. The canal from Dean to Parbold was legally part of the Douglas Navigation, joining the main line of the L&LC at Parbold, which accounts for the right angle bend there. The continuation of the main line through Leyland and the Ribble Valley was never built, the canal passing through Wigan instead. The sections of the canal from Dean to Wigan and Burscough to Sollom were also built under the 1720 Douglas Navigation Act.

 

The water supply from the Douglas was used until the late 1960s, when pollution in the river caused major damage to wildlife in the canal. The river water was like a black slug passing down the canal to Liverpool. Since the water treatment works at Hoscar opened in the late-1970s, Douglas water has improved in quality and is now used as one feeder for the canal.