Emergency fix prevents canal catastrophe
Engineers rushed to the scene of the incident at the Wern to make a temporary fix with the Canal & River Trust promising to sort the damage permanently within a fortnight.
But, after years of flooding wreaking havoc in the Wern area, Cllr Amy Williams has called for a permanent solution.
“We’re fortunate this has happened during a dry spell,” said Cllr Williams, who sits on Guilsfield Community Council and lives in the Wern area.
“The Wern is well known for flooding issues and, in the past, it’s caused real disruption with people trapped in homes, vehicles abandoned, and some properties even declared uninhabitable.
“This time, the escaped water ended up in a privately-owned field, which helped limit the immediate impact. But it’s definitely a warning sign. A permanent solution needs to be prioritised before the wetter months return - we simply can’t risk a repeat of this during the winter when conditions are far more dangerous.”
Guilsfield County Councillor, Ian Harrison, has been calling for action in the area for the past five years and said this latest breach is “on top of years of local flooding causing misery to local households whilst the Canal and Rivers Trust spend a small fortune on a glorified duck pond at the edge of the canal by Pool Quay”.
“Residents have had enough of this comedy of errors, the accumulation of years of under maintenance of the canal and culverts.
“Repeated attempts by residents to get the Natural Resources Wales to update their flood map and modelling has fallen on deaf ears. What do we have to do to get these issues, which repeatedly affect the daily lives of Wern residents during bouts of heavy rain, addressed properly?”
A spokesperson for Canal & River Trust explained to us that the leak isn’t connected to the work that is ongoing with the new Wern Pond a short distance away. It also meant that the contractors were able to get to it quickly to make a temporary fix and avoid a bigger problem.
“We’ve also had an ecologist go out to check there are no fish in distress etc. The water levels should be rising higher now that a repair has been put in place,” they told us.
Paul Ardill, Senior Engineer at Canal & River Trust, added: “The recent storms (end of July) caused a leak at the embankment at Wern. We’ve carried out a temporary repair to stop the leak and ensure the site is safe and, over the next fortnight, we will begin to rebuild this section of embankment.
“Damage such as this demonstrates the challenges our charity faces to help our ageing canal network withstand the tests of time and weather, and we welcome people’s support to keep canals alive.”
PICTURE: Provided by a reader...
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