Brentford Waterways
Though I am not at all a supporter of the developer, particularly the half century desolation of the area, the misinformed stance of the Brentford community council demands correction.To state my credentials, I knew the cut, as this part of the canal is known, when it was still working and I live aboard a barge in Brentford, When the cut was in use, no tugs navigated it, the lighters and barges were left, unmanned , to drift, either up or down with the appropriate tidal flow, to be collected at each end by either river or canal tugs, two very different machines, making the cut too dangerous for the narrow boats to 'overnight' in the cut. The lighters would crash and clatter up and down it.This is why all of the cut was a clear navigation, though there is more than adequate room for moorings and passage of the largest barges that can navigate the Grand Union canal.The way to 'develop' the Brentford waterways is to inhabit them but the constant resistance and enmity of the local authority, to residential boats, prevents and inhibits this. To cite 'future commercial use' of the canals, is wrong headed. to repeat my self, there is more than adequate room for both. I have talked to the British waterways Board (B.W.B) official in charge of commercial development of the canals; a very nice and well informed man and he confirmed that the only commercial activity these last few years, barring BWB maintenance, was the one passage a year of the narrow boat that supplies coal and heating fuel to the residential boats.The only income sources on the canals and the river is tourism or habitation.If the desire to reinstall commercial use of the canals is genuine, then there would have to be enormous investment in the infrastructure, the canals would have to be widened and there is no foreseeable future where that sort of investment would be viable.Were the navigation restricted, to a dangerous degree, by any development, the Port of London Authority (P.L.A.) and the BWB both have statutory authority to remove the obstruction and would do so, with costs being born by the 'obstructor'.Finally the thought of any skipper towing lighters, two abreast, up the cut, as pictured on the map is risible and pointless, the locks are not wide enough and he'd not get round the corner. What he would do, as his predecessors did, is to leave the lighters on the roads in the river and transfer the cargo to canal barges before entering the canal system.So many developments by the water have empty moorings that stay empty. This may be what the Brentford Community are really trying to achieve. If so they should come clean.
J. kenton ● 6133d43 Comments ● 5766d