floating in the city

cleaning the cut - stopping the plastic

The Greenlife boat in action (above) operated by Leicester City Council's Riverside Rangers and volunteer crew from Volunteer Action Leicester. We must win the war on rubbish in the waterways or the seas of plastic will just get bigger.

does british waterways own a banksy by the canal bank?

I am not any kind of art expert but this (above, click to enlarge) looks very much like an original Banksy under a canal bridge. If this is a Banksy it could mean British Waterways owns a fairly valuable piece of artwork, although it is by no means the finest example. Of course there could be legal arguments as the bridge may not belong to British Waterways. However it does look like it is built on British Waterways land, so BW could own the freehold to this Banksy by the canal bank.

• Floating in the City will always support an all out war, using what ever means necessary, including Apache helicopter gunships, against the ego driven 'tagging' graffiti nobodies who insist on spreading their marks like dogs where ever they go. However there are usually exceptions to any rules and Banksy is obviously one. Hopefully the excellent graffiti clean up squads who have been cleaning up the towpaths will not go the way of Westminster Council who insisted on destroying a popular Banksy artwork in the center of London despite local opposition.

britain's canals & waterways to produce mega watts

British Waterways and the Small Hydro Company  are starting 25 small-scale hydropower projects on the banks of British Waterways' 2,200-mile waterway network.

The project will be funded with a £120 million investment from Climate Change Capital, a £1.1 billion investment fund focused on renewable energy technology.

Once fully operational, the hydropower projects will generate 210,000 megawatt-hours per year (enough renewable energy to power 40,000 homes), and prevent an estimated 110,000 tons per year of greenhouse gas emissions.

About 150 jobs are expected to be created during the construction of these projects.

Canals being considered for the scheme would not be man-made but rivers converted into waterways, which retain a natural flow. Underwater turbines will be installed next to existing weirs and will not affect the navigation of canals and rivers.

The first two hydropower projects will be located on the Severn and Trent Rivers. The other locations identified are the Ouse, Don and Aire rivers in Yorkshire. The first project is expected to begin operating in 2010.

Any income generated from the schemes will be reinvested in the maintenance of the waterways.

About 40 per cent of the United Kingdom's renewable electricity is provided by hydropower but few large schemes have been constructed since the 1980s. Globally, hydro generates about 20 per cent of electricity requirements.

"Britain's waterways were the arteries of our economy, providing transport and power," said the environment secretary, Hilary Benn, when the plans were first announced in March. "This scheme shows how with ingenuity and innovation they can once again deliver real economic, social, and environmental benefits, especially in tackling and adapting to climate change."

• Last year British Waterways announced plans to build wind turbines with 100MW of generating capacity.

Above: the "in-stream hydrokinetic turbine" being developed by Hydrovolts.

polluted spring underneath the bank of england

Few people know that beneath the 'pillars of capitalism' of the Bank of England (above) is an ancient Artisan Well or 'spring of wealth'.

Given the state of the economy and levels of corruption in the banking world, it may not be a surprise to learn that the waters of the spring are now totally polluted.

There is a story that if you ask the Bank of England doormen (dressed in pink with top hats) for a glass of water from the spring they have to give it to you. According to the story this is because under the original agreement when the spring was first built over it was stipulated that eternal access to the waters for the general population had to be guaranteed.

I decided to put this to the test and ask for my glass of water from the Bank of England doorman but was informed;

"We can't give it to you because it might kill you, it's all a horrible yellow colour and smells terrible, you would not want to drink it."

Apparently the Bank of England's 'spring of wealth' polluted waters are now being unceremoniously piped to the nearby Walbrook drain (once the Walbrook River) which empties into the Thames.

I followed the trail from the Bank of England down St Stevens Row, and Walbrook road to the Thames.

The photos below show what is almost certainly the pipe where the Walbrook and the nation's 'spring of wealth' now empties.

No wonder the nation's economy is going down the drain.

This is terrible Feng shui for the Bank of England. We need to get that spring reinstated and purified.

worlds rivers are sinking, millions at risk

A combination of rising sea levels and sinking river deltas means global flooding is even more likely than previous forecasts of doom. Scientists are now predicting that global delta flooding could increase by 50 percent. The image above is of the Pearl River Delta in China, taken by NASA's space shuttle Endeavour, with the areas below sea level shown in purple (Source: NASA, CSDMS, University of Colorado). 

 From Psyorg:

A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates most of the world's low-lying river deltas are sinking from human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk.

The study concluded that 24 out of the world's 33 major deltas are sinking and that 85 percent experienced severe flooding in recent years, resulting in the temporary submergence of roughly 100,000 square miles of land. About 500 million people in the world live on river deltas.

"Every year, about 10 million people are being affected by storm surges," said CU-Boulder's Overeem, also an INSTAAR researcher and CSDMS scientist. "Hurricane Katrina may be the best example that stands out in the United States, but flooding in the Asian deltas of Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Ganges-Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh have recently claimed thousands of lives as well."

The researchers predict that similar disasters could potentially occur in the Pearl River delta in China and the Mekong River delta in Vietnam, where thousands of square miles are below sea level and the regions are hit by periodic typhoons.

winter on the way, coal boat passes by

Of course it was a boiling hot day when Liz and her coal boat came by today. They will be back in a month or so, and probably by then so will winter. That's ok, floating in the winter has it's moments, especially with a good wood-stove and central heating.

• Apparently Liz needs to sell 2000 bags of coal just to pay her commercial license fees to BW, so anyone who wants good coal or logs (or diesel & gas) delivered along the canal phone/text: 07930347558.

• The other coal boat (07973915146) can even be followed on twitter to find out where they are.

• List of Boats Selling Coal and Diesel on the Canal System

brilliant narrowboats blog drawn by hand

Above: An illustrated blog post by Blogshank (click image to enlarge).

Thanks to Granny Buttons (always informative, floating, narrow boating blog) for an interesting post about Blogshank a brilliant illustrated narrowboats blog in which each post is drawn by hand (as the post above).

• Latest Blogshank news in the comments is that the St Kilda has not been sold yet, so the fun continues ....

national waterways museum to close?

The National Waterways Museum at Gloucester Docks is "likely to be sunk" in the latest round of massive cuts to British Waterways budget according to this months Private Eye (No 1245) and This is Gloucestershire.

Local politicians are apparently worried that closing the museum will hamper their ability to draw tourists to the docks area's shops and other attractions. However they are not offering any cash to bail out the museum.

The Mayor of Gloucester Chris Witts, a former grain barge skipper and author of several books on the River Severn (the longest river in Britain), is supporting a call for volunteers, otherwise the museum may have to close by the end of the month. Staff are already being laid off.

However it is not just volunteers that are required, they also need visitors, but they are just not getting enough.

• The National Waterways Museum is run by the Waterways Trust which was criticized recently by North Star because it "lacks focus, lacks imagination, lacks a vision, tries to be the jack of all trades and is, unsurprisingly, master of none".

london mayor demands return of the river thames

Above: The London Underground Tube map without the River Thames.

London Mayor Boris Johnson has demanded the return of the River Thames after discovering that the world famous river has vanished from the London Underground Tube Map (see above).

The latest version of the Tube Map, published in September, has been edited by Transport for London designers who removed the Thames because they felt the map had become "cluttered" and had lost its "simplicity".

Now they have been forced to replace the historic waterway by the Mayor, but it will take them until November, presumably because it is a very big river with a lot of water.

Mr Johnson said: "I hope Londoners will imagine the Thames in place until it reappears on the maps, and will not forget their beautiful river."

Floating in the City says: perhaps the Tube Map should include the London canal system, which after all is part of the London transport network and even includes tunnels.

ghost ship cities develop as world trade sinks

Above: a recent vesseltracker.com map (24 hours ago) shows unusually large concentrations of moored, "at anchor" or "not moving" ships around Singapore.

Along with the rest of the world economy, shipping is in crisis. Ghost ship 'cities' of redundant oil tankers and cargo ships have been forming in the seas around Singapore as world trade goes stagnant. 

Industry experts fear that 25% of the entire world fleet of container ships could be sitting idle within two years in what shipping giant Maersk has called a 'crisis of historic dimensions'.

According to a report in the Daily Mail hundreds of ships are also massing off the southern coast of Malaysia:

It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year.

Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them.

'Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'

The size of the idle fleet becomes more palpable when the ships' lights are switched on after sunset. From the small fishing villages that dot the coastline, a seemingly endless blaze of light stretches from one end of the horizon to another. Standing in the darkness among the palm trees and bamboo huts, as calls to prayer ring out from mosques further inland, is a surreal and strangely disorientating experience. It makes you feel as if you are adrift on a dark sea, staring at a city of light.

Shipping prices slashed

• This time last year, an Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost £31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500).

• The cost of sending a 40ft steel container of merchandise from China to the UK has fallen from £850 plus fuel charges last year to £180 this year.

Golden floating opportunities

• Thanks to cheap shipping Oxfam and other emergency organizations can now afford to send food to everyone on the planet who needs it.

• A lot of these boats could be immediately sent to Bangladesh to be used for housing, factories and as floating farms. Flooding is making hundreds of thousands of people homeless in Bangladesh and people trying to escape across the border to India are being shot in their hundreds.

• Container ships could be turned into floating water tanks by the United Nations to distribute water to drought stricken areas and disaster zones.

• Welded together the ships could make floating islands for refugees, possibly creating new floating countries or 'micro-states'.

• We could build a floating Olympic island.

If anyone has any other good ideas please add to comments.