Going green the Chesterfield Canal’s environmental approach to restoration

Green team Chesterfield

Chesterfield Canal Trust is developing a ‘Green Team’ to make the restoration more eco-friendly - and align it with potential funders’ green agendas...

Chesterfield’s Green Team

We felt that the following article from Chesterfield Canal Trust’s magazine ‘The Cuckoo’ deserved a wider audience, especially among our readers from other canal societies, who might be interested in exchanging ideas and good practice with CCT on the benefits, possibilities and difficulties when it comes to making your canal restoration group and its activities as eco-friendly and sustainable as possible. Rod Auton explains...

Earlier this year, the Trustees started looking for ways of developing the Trust to make it as attractive as possible to potential funders when we are applying for grants in the future. Five topics were chosen: . Data collection . Education, Learning & School Projects . Developing the Hollingwood Hub . Making more use of the canal . Developing a Green Team.

I agreed to take on the last of these. We have two separate aims. The first is to create a group of local people who will eventually manage the canal at Renishaw. Hopefully this will then provide a model for further restored sections.

We started by discussing with Bolsover Woodlands Enterprise how the woodlands and pond below the canal can be managed. We have also started a series of clear-ups being held on the last Saturday afternoon of every month. This is to keep the canal clear

Trust Bedford & Milton K eynes Waterway

of litter, but also to keep the towpath clear from Barlborough Road Bridge (which is known locally as Main Road bridge) to Miners Crossing. In the summer this usually gets overgrown with nettles and brambles, but it is a much nicer walk under the trees than the hot and dusty Trans-Pennine Trail.

Our second aim is to look at possibilities for making the Trust and its operations as eco-friendly as possible and to try to build sustainable features into the canal as we restore it.

Some of these choices are really simple, but incredibly expensive. For example we would ideally like to turn all the plant used by the Work Party over to electric power. To this end, I got in touch with JCB / TC Harrison who have been very helpful in the past. An electric excavator, like our own Denis, would cost approximately twice the amount of a diesel version. In the same way, we would ideally like to convert our tripboats to electric power, but again the cost would be enormous. [As an aside, I wouldn’t dare suggest replacing narrow boat Python’s engine – there are far too many people in love with its gentle phut phut and occasional fumes!]

We would also like to install a car charging point at Hollingwood Hub and ideally a bike charging point as well. At present, we are being thwarted by technical difficulties such as getting the power across the canal and the fact that there are at least thirty different types of electric bike recharging fittings, but we will get them sorted eventually.

One of the most obvious things we will do is to make sure that the restored canal is more beneficial to wildlife than at present. We also need to get expert advice as to how to look after wildlife during the construction periods. People always think of creatures like Great Crested Newts or bats or impressive birds like Herons, but it is just as important to care for the very prevalent species such as frogs, minnows and of course the insects which are at the bottom of the food chain. This will mean creating temporary habitats and doing careful planting. We must be

Martin Ludgate

Coming to a canal near you? Maybe...

careful not to inadvertently introduce invasive species like Canadian Pondweed or Himalayan Balsam.

We have been discussing doing some preliminary ecological work at Killamarsh with the Inland Waterways Association. We have also had a discussion with a landscape architect with a view to doing some plans for the restored canal through Killamarsh. Fundamental to this would be local consultation.

We then come to more technical ideas. We will be looking at alternative sources of heating for any new buildings, such asground or water source pumps.

We are looking very carefully at the syphon pipe that will connect Staveley Town Basin with Staveley Puddlebank. Key to this is the amount of water that comes down the canal. Whilst looking at some of the figures I have been amazed by the staggering amounts of water that get lost in evaporation.

We are looking at sustainable methods of pumping water such as Iron Man windmills, which I associate with the Great Plains in America but which are installed here by ECS Engineering Services of Sutton-inAshfield who made and installed the railings and grilles at Staveley Town Basin. One thing we have discovered is that these windmills tend to make a clunking noise, so are not suitable to be installed near houses.

ECS also makes Archimedes screws which can be used for raising water. Screws can also operate in the opposite way be used to generate electricity from water flowing downhill - as pictured. Lots of people have suggested that we should be generating electricity from the bywashes on locks. If you look on the internet there are all sorts of systems suggested, such as Turbulent Hydro, but actually finding ones that have been installed and are working is a far more difficult task. The costs of retro-fitting and connecting to an end user are huge. That said, as more systems are developed and proven to be worthwhile, the prices will fall.

It’s not just volume of water that matters for electricity generation, the drop is also important. We are looking at the places with the biggest drops. These will be going into and out of Rother Valley, especially the Moorhouse Flight [This is one of the two new flights of locks which will be created as part of a diversion to bypass a length of original canal obstructed by a housing estate in Killamarsh - the locks will descend into Nethermarsh Lake and then climb back out agai to return to the original route ...Ed] which will have a drop of about 20m in total in a fairly short distance. If it proved worthwhile, hydro power generators could be designed into the construction of the bywashes.

We are also looking at the possibilities of using Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) for lock gates and bridges. An individual set of FRP lock gates would cost more than Oak or Ekki, but if the new locks are standardised so that we ordered lots of gates of the same size, they would be cheaper than the wooden alternatives. They should also last longer.

All of this is in the very early stages and some ideas may come to nothing, but it is important that we try to anticipate possibilities in order to make sure that they are built into the planning stages, rather than being last minute additions. We would welcome anyone to join the group who has genuine expertise in any useful areas.

Rod Auton