Work has commenced on areas along the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal where boaters have been experiencing difficulty mooring alongside the canal, navigating through bridges and getting stuck on the approach to locks.
It is expected to take up to eight months to dredge sections of the 46-mile Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal from Tixall Lock in Staffordshire to Falling Sand Lock near Kidderminster. In total 17,500 tonnes of silt will be removed from the canal.
The silt and debris which has been building steadily up along the bottom of the canal over a number of years will be scraped off the bottom of the waterway using a floating dredger. Once the silt has been collected it will be reused for bank stabilisation or sent to landfill.
Paul Fox, from the Canal & River Trust, said: “We plan to recycle as much of the silt as possible – in Wolverhampton for example we plan to use the silt to help create new habitats for water voles.”
