OnTheCut

Each year, especially during the summer months, we experience weed on the River Witham that can create problems for boats using the navigation.

The growth of weed is a result of the nutrients within the water and the amount of sunlight and some flows in from the numerous watercourses that join the Witham and so to a large extent we have little control of how much weed is present on the river.

We use weed boats to remove this weed, typically from May through to September, and place it on the banks of the river. We also place booms across some of the tributaries to reduce the amount of weed entering the Witham and ask the Environment Agency to operate their sluice at Boston to flush the weed downstream.

Despite these approaches, navigation may be affected from time to time but please be assured that we will do our best with the resource we have available to manage the weed.

Please report any sightings of weed growth to enquiries.eastmidlands@canalrivertrust.org.uk