Canal cleanups - the Lowell Canal

From across the water, Bill Moreau  has sent me some photos of the recent Lowell cleanup, which you can see here.  This is the waterway in Massachussetts where (bizarrely) the canal owners (the local power company, Boott Hydropower) tried to forbid volunteers from cleaning up their local canal.

Bill's Canalwater Cleaners (sounds like a local business, eh?) disobeyed threats and went ahead anyway.  Good for them!  Bill writes:

You can see the tools that we use to reach the water. Nets, hooks, and gaffs, either on telescoping poles or on rope. Hauling it up isn't exactly fun, but the tools are serviceable.

Please not that almost nothing is of the commercial kinds, for example, you see a net, but really, it is made of electrical conduit, the net is a poly/nylon laundry netting, and the netting is held on the frame by nylon rope. We need to use our brains as well as our brawn to clean them!

This is reminiscent of early efforts on our own canals in the 1960s and 1970s, when the pre-enlightenment British Waterways tried to stop the early Waterways Recovery Group from working their voluntary magic. 

A notorious episode was the 'Ashtac' episode, where volunteers opposed and battled official scorn and opposition to clean up and restore the Ashton Canal with home-made tools.  Thirty years on, and the Ashton Canal is a crucial part of the English inland waterways - and waterways restoration history.

It's described here in the IWA online history, and US waterways campaigners such as Bill Moreau can draw a lot of inspiration and hope from it.