Work starts to rebuild canal’s ruptured walls
WORK to rebuild a section of canal that burst, killing thousands of fish, is under way.
The fish were swept into fields when the Ashby Canal ruptured near Snarestone in December.
Volunteers rushed to help drop boards down into the canal to save water and fish – and a large section has been dry since.
This month a project to rebuild the canal and reinforce it to prevent the same thing happening again has begun.
A spokesman for Leicestershire County Council said: “Work to repair the canal at Snarestone began after Easter and is progressing well.
“We are repairing both the canal and towpath as well as reinforcing the embankment and removing the temporary bund before refilling the canal. We hope this will be completed in the summer.”
Andy Smith, chairman of Measham and District Angling Club, was fishing nearby when disaster struck on December 1.
Speaking at the time, he said: “My float suddenly started moving from left to right and the water, which doesn’t normally flow at all, was moving fast.
“I looked across to the opposite bank and the water level was dropping quite quickly.”
He helped with the effort to stem the flow using planks and returned over the next few days to help save fish. He said: “We found that thousands of fish were washed out across four or five fields, some as big as 20lb.
“Some were big fish surviving in just inches of water. There were ponds that had formed in some tractor tracks that were full of about 60 fish – perch, bream, pike and all sorts. I was helping get them out and put them back into the canal. There were some four fields away from the canal that were still alive and have been saved.
“The scale of it is beyond comprehension.”