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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2016 20:33:10 GMT
No, it wasn't a joke at all.
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Post by htmb on Jan 10, 2016 22:53:31 GMT
I wonder about the narrow steel beams they've laid across the canal in various spots. Any idea what they're for? Certainly not to walk across.
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Post by tod2 on Jan 11, 2016 7:01:52 GMT
Great report Kerouac! I only wish I was there. It would be most interesting to see this work going on. I think I will be too old for the next clean-up boo-hoo-hoo
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 11, 2016 12:08:53 GMT
I want your estimation of proportion of wine to beer bottles thrown into the canal and what are the dominant brands. Those cleanup workers are probably not getting up with a song in their hearts to go to work right now. This is a really great report, as the news stories on the canal cleaning don't nearly give an idea of the giant reality of it, nor how it affects the visual and olfactory landscape of city residents.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2016 6:19:40 GMT
Along the canal it would mostly be beer bottles, and Heineken dominates the market, although I can see some Corona bottles in the photo.
Meanwhile, it was announced that 98 Vélibs have been collected from the canal, but there might be a few more hidden under the mud. 19,000 Vélibs disappeared for more than 24 hours last year but 90% of them are found relatively quickly in the street or in the courtyards of buildings. One can only speculate as to how many might be lying in the bottom of the Seine.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2016 13:02:19 GMT
Now that some of the trash has been removed, they can do the real cleaning. This is the temporary dam to keep water in the tunnel to Bastille. The bulldozers still have some collections to make. The sides of about half of the canal have already been sandblasted. Sandblasting is noisy, annoying work. The walls are quite clean afterwards. Since it finally froze in Paris last night, ice was beginning to form. You can see that the stupid seagulls are still camped out in the distance.
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Post by tod2 on Jan 18, 2016 15:01:32 GMT
Thank you so much for letting us see the progress! I desperately would love to be there but just your mention of the words 'froze last night - and icecicles', changed my mind. I am so impressed with the job they are doing. I thought they would merely remove the shit of the bottom, take it away and start re-filling. Sandblasting the walls is a fantastic step and I can't wait to see the new Canal St.Martin in September!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2016 15:08:46 GMT
Well, this is a 91 day project and they have only been working for 14 days, including the drainage day, so they are obviously going to be doing many more things, even if they have given themselves some wiggle room for the work stopping a few days for bad weather.
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Post by fumobici on Jan 18, 2016 15:38:55 GMT
Wonderful thread k2. It's pretty much what I imagined it'd look like with the water drained out, I was picturing Vélibs and lots of green Heineken bottles.
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Post by patricklondon on Jan 19, 2016 8:48:55 GMT
Curious coincidence: there was a piece on last night's local TV news on replacing lock gates on one of the canals near Kings Cross in London, with lots of junk removed from the drained basin - apparently they estimated 70 tons of assorted muck, but then this is a job that gets done only every 25 years or so. Apparently they're having an open day next weekend. Maybe my sciatica will loosen up enough for me to go and take some pictures. My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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ssander
member
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At the Belleville Arts Open Doors in Paris in 2007
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Post by ssander on Jan 22, 2016 1:15:02 GMT
Thank you so much for this report...I have been checking it periodically to keep up with the progress.
I assume that when some inebriated soul rides his motorscooter (or velib) into the canal, he figures it's totaled, so he might as well leave it there. :-)
ssander
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Post by chexbres on Jan 22, 2016 7:52:39 GMT
Great ongoing report, kerouac. I was there last week, and it was amazing to see how fast the work is going. I looked at buying apartments along this canal in 2008 - when the area resembled the Bowry in New York. It's pretty much the same nowadays, though - except that the people hanging out dress better and can afford more expensive libations.
A couple of years ago, in response to complaints from people living in the neighborhood, the city erected huge signs declaring that noise, music, alcohol and indecent behavior were prohibited by law - but they quickly gave up on enforcing this. I'm not sure if that's because there weren't enough officers to do the job, or because this Puritanical attitude contradicted Mayor Hidalgo's opinion that Paris should be "alive at night".
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2016 17:42:47 GMT
It was sunny and almost warm not really cold today, so the canal called to me on my way beack from two other errands. Since there was a fair amount of rain in recent days, the feathered residents had a bit more water in which to frolic. There are still a few collections of items that probably surfaced after most of the other things had been hauled away.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2016 17:54:25 GMT
A welder was working on the locks. All of the companies working on this project want us to know who they are. I had been staying at the southern end of the canal where so many things were happening, but as I went north I saw that they have not even picked up most of the rubbish yet. There was a worker who seemed to be searching for possible valuables in the muck. There are probably a lot of empty wallets in the canal. There are major shoals of fresh water mussels in the canal. The boat cruises point out the mussels in the locks when the water goes down. A bit of heavy equipment was at work in the northern section, picking up mud.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2016 17:59:13 GMT
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Post by htmb on Jan 25, 2016 21:49:13 GMT
This is such a marvelous thread. It's wonderful to watch the progress as it appears through your camera lens.
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Post by tod2 on Jan 26, 2016 8:46:06 GMT
Thanks for more photos. I am looking forward to seeing the pristine result.
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Post by mossie on Jan 26, 2016 11:18:12 GMT
Yes please, keep them coming.
I am looking forward to the odour free result when I get there in April.
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Post by cynthia on Jan 26, 2016 17:06:37 GMT
As a result of K's first photo report, years ago, about the canal, I took one of the boat tours and never imagined what was under the water. I find this cleaning process endlessly fascinating. Thank you. Please keep them coming.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2016 17:32:27 GMT
I'm glad that most of you don't seem to be bored yet. I think the last time they emptied the canal, they found five cars. None this time. But the time before that (whenever that was), they found more than 50. There were more deserted industrial areas back then and just burning the cars in an empty lot had not yet become popular. One thing that surprised a lot of people was that all of the cars they pulled out looked like convertibles. That's because the industrial barges smashed off the tops as they navigated through. Of course, there were no tourist boats back then.
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Post by htmb on Jan 26, 2016 22:00:37 GMT
I continue to think about the two young men we saw dive into the canal and swim to the opposite side the night of the Fête de la Musique. Yuck!
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Post by lola on Jan 27, 2016 2:16:16 GMT
Wow. Thanks, Kerouac. What a mess.
Hannah and I watched the houseboat Adeline being lowered down a lock in June, wondering where it was going. A few days later, we saw it tied up to the Île aux Barbiers at the Festival Django in Samois.
I can understand stealing a bicycle, but I can't understand then dumping it into a canal.
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Post by nycgirl on Feb 1, 2016 1:47:47 GMT
How interesting. Such a shame about all the destroyed bikes, but I love your photos of all the muddy urban detritus.
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Post by tod2 on Feb 1, 2016 13:34:03 GMT
Kerouac, now that we can see all the muck that has to be cleared away, one would think the powers that be should consider a shorter time period between clean-ups. Less muck, quicker fixed.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2016 15:33:01 GMT
I would say that there are multiple arguments against doing it more often: budgetary considerations, disruption of navigation and the fact that the blocked canal is probably becoming unhealthy upstream with nowhere for the water to go (although some of the water can be released into the Canal Saint Denis which branches off the Canal de l'Ourcq at La Villette).
Once the operation is finished, they will compare the number of tonnes of crap they took out this time to the number of tonnes they took out last time, and that will help them to decide if it needs to be cleaned more -- or less -- often.
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Post by htmb on Feb 1, 2016 18:47:25 GMT
I flipped my "homemade" office calendar to the month of February this morning and two of the three photos are of the Canal Saint-Martin. Good thing!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2016 19:26:14 GMT
Just a bit more information for those who are waiting for the next set of photos. It is already calculated that are 9000 tonnes of polluted sludge and 5000 tonnes of unpolluted sludge to remove from the canal. I don't know how they decide which is which, but I presume it has to do with the location of the stuff (upstream, downsteam...). Besides the beer cans, bottles and bicycles, the city says they they have also removed a number of bathtubs, washing machines, tyres, ski boots and also a drone.
In 2001, they found wheelchairs, scooters and parking meters. The canal has been drained about every 10 years since 1866, and there have been incredible reports of findings over the years. In 1925: silver spoons, knives, brushes, dead dogs and a cat locked in a basket, a golden monstrance, censers, a holy water vessel and chandeliers. In 1879, the drained canal revealed slime "80cm deep with such a stench that people living along the canal were unable to eat."
The fine for throwing something into the canal is currently 68 euros, but I doubt that many people have been fined.
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Post by mossie on Feb 4, 2016 20:50:39 GMT
I don't know what genius could work out the proportion of polluted sludge. It did remind me of when I went to live beside the Thames in Stepney we were warned that if we went in the river it would mean a trip to hospital and about 14 nasty injections, not forgetting the stomach pump. Was that really nearly 68 years ago, help!
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Post by htmb on Feb 4, 2016 21:08:18 GMT
It sounds like, once the project is complete, it will be a dramatically different environment for the fish and birds to enjoy. For awhile, anyway.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2016 11:07:59 GMT
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