More than 70 people from a wide range of Users attending the BW North West Headquarters on Tuesday 16th March. In a lively meeting BW gave a flavour of the problems they had

in terms of maintenance and planned works for the coming season. A full report will follow in due course from our NW Rep.

Drained!

A measure of the problems they faced were in evidence outside the building and down past the Pier and the next two locks 88/89 Pagefield and Hell Meadow! On Sunday night vandals had opened lock paddles outside The DW Stadium resulting in a completely drained canal for the best part of 2 miles! A sorry site indeed and due to water management problems drawing down through the Wigan flight it is expected to be several days before additional draw off can be arranged.

This has affected several local canal-side businesses including the Wigan based trip boat Kittywake which had parties booked this week.

Needless to say much of the debate was about what measures could be taken to prevent this type of occurrence. There were unconfirmed reports that within hours of the complete drainage scrap dealers were quickly clearing parts of the large quantities of supermarket trolleys exposed! There was even a suggestion that it might have been the reason it was vandalised!

Rumour!

It is rumoured also that a NABO Councillor was on his feet urging people in quite strong terms to volunteer in all sorts of ways to help BWNW to prioritise the workload within the budget constraints. This followed a quite comprehensive report on costs, achievements and priorities from BW. NABO don’t just tackle injustices!