BBC Look East had an item yesterday about the starting of a traffic in container barges carrying sewage sludge from Ely to King's Lynn. It's worth watching if you can - make sure you do so within a week, before it disappears from the iPlayer - if only to see the tender being pushed sideways along the river; the Bantam pushing the barge, and how close it all gets to an expensive-looking fibreglass cruiser!
Here's the brief description from the website:
Anglian Water is to use barges to transport sewage between Ely in Cambridgeshire and King's Lynn in Norfolk, replacing a fleet of lorries.
The sludge will be loaded into containers to travel the 30 miles up the river by barge to the sewage works, saving 16 daily tanker journeys between the two towns.
This is the second waterways-related (and Anglian Water) story in two days. On Tuesday BBC Look East ran an item on the problem of the zebra mussel and what's being done about it.
Again, from the website:
A Cambridge company has come up with a new way of killing off zebra mussels which costs (sic) Anglian Water £500,000 a year.
(They/we mean it's the mussels which cost that much, not the new way of killing them.)
The non-native zebra mussels thrive in fresh water and are also a problem for boat-owners, clinging in their thousands under the waterline and even getting into engines.
2 comments:
Hopefully the passage of the loaded boats will scour out the entrance to Denver Sluice a bit- unless they're using the Relief Channel, in which case the job of steering probably qualifies for The Most Boring Job In The World!
What fantastic news, Halfie. We were talking just the other day about how the need for more cost effective and fuel-efficient means of transport might bring life back to the waterways. This looks to be a start. Wonderful to hear it and see it.
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