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Drain a channel to clean it ... and remove various objects

The emptying of a canal, an act of care and maintenance sometimes with surprises

Winter is a rather quiet season for river tourism. It is therefore an ideal time to carry out maintenance and cleaning work. And during the winter 2019-2020, several structures in France have been drained (and therefore dried up). This was the case in Toulouse, in the Canal du Midi, but also in Agen, in the lateral canal of the Garonne. This is a rather rare operation since it is carried out every 10 to 15 years. For example, in the Ville Rose, the last one was in 2006. And for the witnesses of this act, it's quite impressive. Especially since often, strange waste is fished out.

 

Cleaning work necessary for the proper functioning of the structures.

Every year, in winter, the period of unemployment on the canals occurs, i.e. the carrying out of work and draining that is essential to enable them to function properly for the rest of the year. And in December 2019, Voies Navigables de France decided to take advantage of this "unemployment" to carry out a maintenance operation in Toulouse and Agen. Thus, for two days, between the Bayard and des Minimes locks, the Canal du Midi ran dry. The objectives were to de-silting the bed, running cables and repairing the locks. Of course, no boats were allowed to circulate during this work. And if at first glance this task seems complicated and above all, gigantic, for the agents of Voies Navigables de France, it is rather easy to do. In Toulouse, the city's VNF communications manager says that it involves "evacuating tens of thousands of cubic metres of water in a few days" and that there is "nothing simpler". During this work, boats and barges must therefore park elsewhere, outside the diversion bays (a reach being a section between two locks) that have been emptied. As for the fish living in the canal, they either evacuate the diversion bays on their own or are evacuated by specialists from the Departmental Fishing Federation. Then they are released when it is over.

 

Operations revealing hundreds of very diverse objects

At Agence, traffic on the Garonne side canal has been interrupted since 6 January and until 1 March 2020 to ensure its annual maintenance. In Toulouse, drainage had begun at the beginning of December 2019 and the Canal du Midi was reopened to navigation on 26 December 2019. And each time, during these operations, the same pattern is repeated: strange "treasures" resurface. Bicycles, household appliances, city barriers, gas bottles, sofas, scrap metal ... VNF agents find many objects. Some of them were quite bulky, such as crashed cars and others rather unusual, such as a safe containing EDF bills! Objects that pollute the water, which can also be dangerous for boaters and must be removed. They are therefore all collected, then sorted and recycled (for those that can be recycled).

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