£1 million dredging project on Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal

The Canal and River Trust have started work on an eight month project to dredge sections of the 46-mile Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal from Tixall Lock in Staffordshire to Falling Sand Lock near Kidderminster.

The work will focus on areas along the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal where boaters are having difficulty mooring alongside the canal, navigating through bridges or getting stuck on the approach to locks. In total around 17,500 tonnes of silt – which is the same in weight as over 13,000 fully grown hippos – will be removed from the canal.

​Using a floating dredger, silt and debris which has built up along the bottom of the canal over a number of years, will be scrapped off the bottom of the waterway. Once collected the silt will either be reused for bank stabilisation or sent to landfill.