Canal breach pump project costs '£80k per month'

The Canal and River Trust says it is spending about £80,000 a month to pump overflow water away from a major canal breach in Shropshire.

In December, a hole opened up under the Llangollen Canal near Whitchurch, which caused millions of litres of water - and more than 1,000 fish - to go into a nearby field.

Since then, the trust has been working with a reservoir in Wales to pump out the sediment-filled volumes.

The charity says it is working "around the clock" to get that water away from the site so work can begin to restore the damaged part of the network where narrowboats were left stricken at the end of last year.

The events of 22 December saw two boats sent to the bottom of a trench that emerged, and a third hanging over its edge.

All boats were lifted to safety nearly a month later.

But works after that and continuing into March are proving expensive, with more than £24,000 a month being spent on fuel alone to keep the pumps working.

"You've got all the hire costs, all the equipment and maintenance and everything, security - it just goes on and on," said project manager Simon Harding.

The charity gets its funding from a mixture of government grants, boating licences, and commercial income.

Harding said the trust needed to work quickly to avoid damaging more wildlife.

"We're maintaining the oak trees, pruning them and cutting a lot of vegetation because we've got nesting bird season starting fairly soon," he said.

"After next week, we'll be doing an investigation to understand the nature of the ground to enable us to rebuild the embankment."

Water has been getting pumped away from the field at a rate of 20 litres a second.

"There is 12 and a half million cubic metres of water there that we're pumping," Harding said.

He said once the level of the run-off water had been reduced, work would be able to start to restore the canal.

"There's probably another six and a half million [litres] left [to pump] but originally we were only pumping during daytime hours," he stated.

"We're now able to pump 24 hours a day so effectively we could be pumping twice or three times as much per day," he said.

"I think it's going to still take us another week or so at least."

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