CANAL & RIVER TRUST HAS ANNOUNCED the reopening date for the breach on the Llangollen Canal.
It tells this is expected to reopen in March of next year—15 months after the breach closed the navigation.
The trust also tells it has completed ground investigations, engineering surveys and detailed design work and is now well advanced with the rebuild of the embankment.
Open ahead of Easter
Importantly, the canal is expected to reopen ahead of Easter, allowing businesses and visitors to benefit from the start of the main boating and tourism season.
Since the breach occurred, the trust has invested several million pounds in the response, making the site safe, carrying out extensive investigations and developing the engineering solution needed to rebuild the canal.
This has included maintaining the flow of around 40 million litres of water every day around the breach site, though overnight one of the pumps failed.
Maintaining this flow remains essential, not only for navigation but also because the Llangollen Canal plays a critical role in supplying fresh water to homes and businesses across Cheshire.
Modern engineering techniques
The next phase of construction, delivered in partnership with our infrastructure partner Kier, will see the collapsed embankment and canal channel rebuilt using modern engineering techniques not available when the canal was originally constructed more than 200 years ago.
Reinforced layers within the new embankment will improve its long-term strength and resilience, helping to protect this historic waterway against increasingly extreme weather and the effects of climate change.