en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Canal & River Trust completed a dredging project on the Ashby Canal in Leicestershire, England, in early June 2026. The project, with a total investment of over £400,000 (approximately $510,000), took about nine weeks and covered approximately 6 kilometers of waterway from Sutton Wharf Bridge near Sutton Cheney to Wykin Bridge near Hinckley, removing a total of about 4,600 cubic meters of silt.
Built in 1804 and stretching about 35 kilometers, the Ashby Canal is one of the few lock-free canals in the UK, popular among boaters and holiday rental groups. After nearly two centuries of operation, some sections had become increasingly shallow due to long-term siltation, causing boat bottoms to scrape the riverbed and hindering navigation, which affected the cruising experience and the regional boating economy worth around £200 million along the canal. As part of its annual maintenance plan, the Canal & River Trust prioritized this section for remediation, with work commencing in early March 2026.
The operation employed a grab dredging technique, with a tracked excavator mounted on a barge to sequentially excavate mud and sediment from the riverbed. The material was loaded into a hopper barge with a grid for dewatering, then transported to designated farmland about 3 kilometers from the worksite. After natural air-drying on site, the silt was evenly spread and plowed into the soil to increase organic matter, improve soil structure, and achieve waste recycling. This method is one of the green dredging models promoted by the trust, whose nationwide waterway maintenance operations generate approximately 70,000 tons of sediment annually, a significant portion of which is used for agricultural soil improvement. It is estimated that after this dredging, navigable water depth can be restored by about 0.5 to 0.7 meters, effectively reducing hull friction and fuel consumption caused by siltation.
This project is the second phase of systematic dredging on the Ashby Canal. In 2025, dredging and bank consolidation were completed on an approximately 6.4-kilometer section between Sutton Cheney and Market Bosworth. Concurrently, the project also cleared overly dense tree canopies above the waterway that obstructed visibility, widened the effective navigable width, improved sightlines for boaters, and further ensured the continuity and safety of canal navigation.
Linny Beaumont, Regional Director for the East Midlands at the trust, stated that while dredging is not conventionally considered a "glamorous project," it is a crucial means of maintaining the canal's historical functionality, ensuring continuous vessel passage, and driving economic vitality in communities along the route. It is also a foundational project in addressing water resource fluctuations caused by climate change.
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