Category Archives: Safety

Royal Canal closure

Posted on Thursday 16 July 2015 | 3 comments

I don’t usually report WI marine notices, but the current closure of the Royal Canal at Abbeyshrule is the result of one of the more unusual incidents I can recall.

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Posted in Ashore, Canals, Extant waterways, Ireland, Modern matters, Non-waterway, Operations, Safety, Waterways management

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ESB and the Shannon

Posted on Sunday 28 June 2015 | Leave a comment

I wrote here that I had written to the ESB, on 27 May 2015, to ask about navigation on the Shannon from Castleconnell downstream. One month later, I have not yet received a reply.

I did hear this weekend that ESB had contacted certain boat-owners to inform them that they were not to moor to the ESB embankments between Portumna and Meelick. As a riparian landowner, ESB is no doubt within its rights, but it would be interesting to know how much of the bed of the Shannon it claims to own in that area.

I have still not been able to find out, from the ESB, the clearance under its high-voltage lines crossing the Shannon (and other navigations). I gather that the ESB works on the principle that, if it provides no information, it can’t be blamed if owners of masted vessels electrocute themselves, whereas if it did provide information it might be sued. Strange that a public sector body should have such a blasé attitude to the prospect of the electrocution of the citizenry.

Perhaps if I asked questions under the Access to Information on the Environment Regulations 2007/2011 I might get replies.

 

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Modern matters, Operations, Politics, Safety, Shannon, shannon estuary, Sources, waterways, Waterways management

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On the Pill

Posted on Tuesday 16 June 2015 | Leave a comment

Brian Simpson has kindly sent me photos of the small-boat rally on St John’s Pill (River) in Waterford at the end of May; I’ve put them on this page.

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Posted in Built heritage, Canals, Drainage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, People, Safety, Scenery, Suir, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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Mathew Bridge

Posted on Thursday 11 June 2015 | Leave a comment

In the news again.

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Posted in Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, Safety, Shannon, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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Clobber

Posted on Saturday 6 June 2015 | Leave a comment

Clothing

The action of paddling keeps you warm above the waist and the canoe and spray cover keep you warm below the waist, so that heavy clothing is rarely necessary when canoeing, whatever the time of year. For normal purposes all that is necessary is a shirt and shorts and a pair of light rubber or string-soled shoes or sandals.

Carry warmer clothing in a waterproof bag to put on when you go ashore.

For windy weather a hooded ‘Anorak’ is useful (Fig 41).

For wet weather wear a sou’wester and an oilskin or plastic jacket (and trousers for going ashore). If you wear gum boots when you are ashore TAKE THEM OFF before getting into your canoe.

That’s from Know the Game: Boating: rowing, canoeing, punting published by Educational Productions Limited of East Ardsley, Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1960.

Its cover has a drawing of three chaps: one is canoeing, clad as recommended in shorts and shirt; one is punting; the third is sculling, and he has a passenger, a young lady wearing a (below the knee) frock who is steering the boat using the rudder lines. Apart from the cover, none of the book’s 86 illustrations shows a female.

O tempora, O mores! Buoyancy aids, helmets and fluorescent clothing are now required, as shown in the pics on the Shannon Blueways site. [Incidentally, if there’s a link to that site from the Waterways Ireland site, I was unable to find it.] I’m all in favour of safety, but I wonder whether the amount of extraneous kit and clobber needed to go boating nowadays is a deterrent to potential newcomers.

 

 

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Posted in Economic activities, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Safety, Shannon, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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Please don’t look at these photos

Posted on Tuesday 26 May 2015 | 5 comments

I regret to say that I have published, on these pages, several photos of the Shannon, Parteen Villa Weir, Ardnacrusha hydroelectric power station and its headrace and tailrace canals.

The storage basin between the road bridge over the River Shannon at Killaloe and the weir and canal intake at Parteen, including the right and left embankments constructed to form the said storage basin, together with the land outside and along the said right embankment delimited and separated from the adjoining land by post and wire fencing and also the land outside and, along the said left embankment delimited by the left bank of the Kilmastulla River Diversion.

Parteen Villa Weir from the embankment upstream (2008)

Parteen Villa Weir from the embankment upstream (2008)

The flooded area above Parteen Villa Weir

The flooded area above Parteen Villa Weir

The weir and canal intake, the embankments constructed to form abutments to the said intakes, the syphon under the said canal intake, and adjoining lands inside and bounded by post and wire fencing.

Parteen Villa Weir

Parteen Villa Weir

Parteen Villa Weir from upstream

Parteen Villa Weir from upstream

The six sluices controlling discharges down the old course of the river

The six sluices controlling discharges down the old course of the river

The head race between the canal intake and the power station including the right and left embankments constructed to form the said head race, together with the land outside and along the said embankments delimited and separated from the adjoining land by post and wire fencing, and also the road bridges over and the syphons and culverts under the said race.

The headrace from the bridge at Clonlara 20 November 2009

The headrace from the bridge at Clonlara 20 November 2009

The headrace from the bridge at O'Briensbridge 22 November 2009

The headrace from the bridge at O’Briensbridge 22 November 2009

The power station, the intake to the said power station, the locks and all adjoining buildings and land within the area around the said power station, all of which are delimited and separated from the adjoining land by post and wire fencing.

The upper chamber at Ardnacrusha lock

The upper chamber at Ardnacrusha lock

Ardnacrusha: looking up at the top chamber from the bottom

Ardnacrusha: looking up at the top chamber from the bottom

The penstocks that feed the turbines at Ardnacrusha

The penstocks that feed the turbines at Ardnacrusha

Ardnacrusha power station from the headrace

Ardnacrusha power station from the headrace

The fishpass

The fishpass

The tail race from the power station to the River Shannon, the branch railway running along the said tail race, and the land on either side of the said tail race, all of which are delimited and separated from the adjoining land by post and wire fencing.

Outflow

Outflow

And I have lots more photos … here and here and here, which I ask readers not to look at either.

You see the thing is, Your Honour, Sir, I didn’t know. I didn’t realise that, under Statutory Instrument 73 of 1935 Shannon Electricity Works (Declaration of Prohibited Place) Order 1935, the places as described are prohibited places under paragraph (d) of Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, as amended by the Official Secrets Act 1920, and as adapted by or under the Adaptation of Enactments Act 1922 (No 2 of 1922). That’s because

information with respect thereto, or the destruction or obstruction thereof, or interference therewith, would be useful to an enemy.

Apparently, under those acts, giving anyone information about a prohibited place is a felony, punishable by imprisonment for up to fourteen years.

Wikipedia says that, in Ireland, those acts were repealed by the Official Secrets Act 1963, but was the statutory instrument repealed? I don’t know, but I’ve written to the Department of Justice to ask.

In the meantime, please don’t look at the photos, especially if you’re a Foreign Agent: a term that, under the 1963 act,

includes any person who is or has been or is reasonably suspected of being or having been employed by a foreign power either directly or indirectly for the purpose of committing an act (whether within or outside the State) prejudicial to the safety or preservation of the State, or who has or is reasonably suspected of having (whether within or outside the State) committed or attempted to commit any such act.

I wonder whether that includes the European Central Bank.

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Non-waterway, Operations, People, Politics, Rail, Safety, Shannon, Sources, Waterways management

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Re-invention or re-creation?

Posted on Friday 15 May 2015 | 1 comment

I realise that many folk visit this website in order to find out what is hip and trendy, cool and with-it, in all sorts of fields, from beer to boating, casual dining to cost-benefit analysis. So, in order to keep readers down wid da kidz in da hood [as the young folk say], I’ve been checking out the latest, baddest [which means ‘goodest’, I gather, or what in the old days we would have called ‘best’], grooviest developments on tinterweb. It’s a thing called FaceTweet, and those cool dudes at Waterways Ireland have one of them. Hep to the jive, daddy-o [which means ‘How perfectly splendid, old boy’.]

As far as I can see, FaceTweet is in general intended for folk whose attention span renders them unable to read more than a single paragraph of continuous prose. But brevity is sometimes the soul of wit and good goods come in small parcels [sentiments for whose veracity I have not found peer-reviewed evidence]. And I was interested in Waterways Ireland’s self-description on the page:

Waterways Ireland is the Recreation Authority for over 1000km of Ireland’s Inland navigable waterways.

That phrase, Recreation Authority, does not occur in Waterways Ireland’s Business Plan 2015 [as approved by the North South Ministerial Council on 18 December 2014 and screwed up by the Council shortly afterwards] or in its Corporate Plan 2014–2016 [ditto]. Nor, according to its own search engine, is the phrase used on Waterways Ireland’s proper website [the search engine rather bafflingly reports “We don’t have any refiners to show you”].

Yet the concept of Waterways Ireland as a Recreation Authority is almost entirely in tune with the thinking underlying both of the plans and it is the neatest encapsulation I have yet seen of what WI is about.

I put in ‘almost’ there because the Corporate Plan‘s Executive Summary includes this:

Central to our vision for the future is the development of recreational, heritage and environmental opportunities that link people, history and nature, providing both local communities and visitors with compelling reasons to spend more time in the waterways environment.

While I’m all — well, somewhat — in favour of heritage and environment, the words seem to sit uneasily in that sentence: added as a form of ritual obeisance to the shade of Michael D Higgins, who ripped the rivers and canals from the sheltering embrace of the Office of Public Works engineers and proclaimed the waterways to be heritage artefacts. Heritage is no longer of great interest to TPTB and most people’s experience of it [whatever it is] is as entertainment or recreation; much the same applies to environment, which — for most people — is of interest only as providing a scenic background for more interesting activities.

So both heritage and environment can be subsumed under the heading of recreation, leaving Waterways Ireland with a neat, well-focused description of itself, a subheading for its title, and one that matches its Mission and Vision.

Mind you, it’s not entirely clear what a recreation authority is — Google finds relatively few [129000] instances of the term’s use, most of them in the Americas — but that might be no harm.

Waterways Ireland — the recreation authority

Hep to the jive, daddy-o: I like it.

 

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Irish waterways general, Natural heritage, Non-waterway, Operations, People, Politics, Restoration and rebuilding, Safety, Scenery, Shannon, Sources, Tourism, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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Chains at the Black Bridge

Posted on Thursday 14 May 2015 | 1 comment

It seems that the city edition of the Limerick Leader dated Saturday May 16 2015 carries a story saying that funding has been approved for the repair of the Black Bridge at Plassey. I can’t find the story on the Leader‘s website and I can’t find anything about it anywhere else [there is a limit to the amount of my life I am willing to spend trying to find anything on the Limerick Council website] except on the Leader‘s FaceTweet page, where I can expand the city edition front page.

There is a photo of several councillors, which of course is wonderful: no day is wasted if it offers an opportunity of looking at a photo of local councillors, especially important ones with chains.

From what I can read of the text, it seems that “councillors in City East” [which is not one of the Limerick districts listed here] are willing to spend €50,000 “to start work to make the walkway safe again”. And they hope that Clare County Council, the University of Limerick and Waterways Ireland will “also row in behind the project”.

Now, half a loaf is better than no bread, and €50,000 is better than a poke in the eye from a blind horse, but it’s not going to go very far towards the cost of repairing the Black Bridge. I don’t known whether it would even cover the cost of a full survey.

I’m sure that Waterways Ireland would be delighted to help, if the Department of Fairytales hadn’t raided its coffers to pay for Saunderson’s Sheugh. I have reason to believe that the university was willing to help — and that Clare County Council was not. I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the university, asking it for [recent] records relating to the Black Bridge. The university gave me three extracts from meetings of the Limerick Smarter Travel Steering Group:

9 January 2013
Funding not in place for Black Bridge

21 November 2013
Black Bridge: UL indicated that funding may be available from UL. LST [Limerick Smarter Travel] has indicated funding in the order of €100,000. UL may be able to mach [sic] this. Request for funding to be made formally to UL by LCCC and to include surveys and reports on bridge to date.

18 September 2014
RR said UL have set aside €100,000 towards Black bridge refurbishment but will need matched funding from LA [presumably local authority]. Black bridge will require a detailed study to identify what repair work will need to be carried out, also an AA study will be required, and proper consents from ABP [An Bord Pleanála?]. Funding currently not available from LA.
PON spoke to Clare Co Co. No funding available from them.
PC Department will not fund a pedestrian bridge.
RR can we look for alternative funding options, UL will ring fence for the moment.

An AA study is, I think, an Appropriate Assessment, a sort of employment creation scheme for bird-watchers who can read European directives [and sooner them than me].

The point to be remembered here is that Limerick County Council leased the bridge and undertook to keep it in repair; there is no obligation on Waterways Ireland, Clare County Council or the University of Limerick to spend a penny on it. The two parties on whom lies the responsibility for repairing the bridge are the Limerick Council and the Department of Finance, which latter has the power, under the lease, to do the work and charge it to the council. That would be a better use of its time and money than an unnecessary and intrusive footbridge in the middle of Limerick.

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Canals, Charles Wye Williams, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Natural heritage, Operations, People, Politics, Restoration and rebuilding, Safety, Scenery, Shannon, Sources, The cattle trade, The turf trade, Tourism, Uncategorized, waterways, Waterways management

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Hurrah for the red, white and orange

Posted on Tuesday 5 May 2015 | 8 comments

Colour discrimination seems to be rampant in Ireland. Of the sets of colours [red, white and blue] and [green, white and orange], there is Official Endorsement of two, green and blue, while red, white and orange are ignored. Even the North/South Ministerial Council has got in on the act, with a whole page on its website about greenways and blueways. They must have been overdosing on the Erne flag. Their page is a list of links, sort of plonked there without context or explanation, but there’s probably some hands-across-the-borderism or something going on.

I read in the Guardian today of a proposal for a greenway on the former railway line between Roscrea and Portumna via Birr. And a jolly good thing too, but how many greenways and blueways can one small island accommodate? How thinly will the tourists be spread? And what about those of us who hate walking, cycling, kayaking and other such energetic pursuits?

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Operations, Rail, Restoration and rebuilding, Roads, Safety, Scenery, Shannon, Tourism, Ulster Canal, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

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A grand day out in Galway for small boats

Posted on Wednesday 8 April 2015 | Leave a comment

Here, courtesy of Kyran O’Gorman, are his notes on navigating the Ballycuirke Canal from Lough Corrib to Ross Lake. Small boats only, and at your own risk.

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Posted in Built heritage, Canals, Drainage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, Safety, Water sports activities, waterways

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