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Site updated on 25 October 2008. You are here: Home

 Latest news 

6 July 2009
"Blue Days" in September !
A great family event will take place on the week-end of 19-20 September 2009, to celebrate the return of boats to the Roubaix-Espierres Canals.
Read the article ...

4 November 2008
Lecture on industrial navigation
On Friday 28 November 2008, 8:00 PM, in Maison du Canal at Leers-Nord, Bernard LE SUEUR, Blue Links expert, will give a conference "Espierre and the others, assets of industrial navigation".
(6 rue du Canal 7730 Leers-Nord, Belgium, near the lock)

Free entrance. Informations and reservations : Agence de Développement Local : tel (+32) 56 48 13 77 - laure.andre@estampuis.be

10 October 2008
A new canal age in Europe A wind of change is blowing throughout Europe, breathing new life into canals that remained out of the public eye for decades: filled in, made over to other uses or abandoned to the forces of nature. North-West Europe has been showing the way for 25 years. Today, the message on the benefits of restoring historic canals is spreading throughout the planning zones of the EU and beyond, into Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

6 June 2008
Dredging pontoons on the home straight! José Dewulf, dredging pontoon skipper on the Roubaix Canal and the canalised river Marque, will soon have finished his extraordinary nautical ballet for Blue Links. By 4 July, he and his colleagues will have removed 70,000 m3 of sediment from the canalised river Marque and transferred the spoil to the disposal area at Wattrelos. Read our interview with the contractor Ghent Dredging.

3 March 2008
Pump up the volume! Onlookers along the canal will have noticed that the locks are being drained one by one. This is necessary to carry out the works on the water supply system. VNF, MET and their contractors have to empty the locks to bury the pumping stations and their suction pipes. The canal's water supply will be ensured by a pumping station at each lock.

5 February 2008
12 movable bridges - 12 challenges! Recreational navigation on Europe’s rivers and canals is an adventure marked by countless events, in which the waterway’s structures themselves play a key role. Lift-bridges have a unique appeal, and have been painted by many artists. There is something incomparably graceful in the movements of the bridge decks which rise, swing or slide to let boats pass through. Update on the restoration of these structures.

17 January 2008
Union bridge swings again! The Fontenoy swing-bridge in Roubaix had its deck refitted this Monday 14 January 2008, marking a new stage in the canal’s restoration.

3 January 2008
Filter basins top up supply As a man-made canal, the Canal de Roubaix has to be regularly supplied with water. Since it was opened in 1877, the canal has been supplied with water from the river Deûle by a pumping station in Lille. This system is now life-expired. The pumping equipment itself is antiquated, the flow of the river Deûle is inadequate during the summer months, and the water quality itself is below the required standard. The Blue Links partners therefore had to find an alternative solution to supply the canal with water.

13 March 2007
Problem of water levels. The Blue Links project partners, and in the first place Voies Navigables de France, manager of the waterway and responsible for the restoration works, are investigating the causes of heavy leakages from the canal pounds in the Wasquehal flight of locks. Read News Flash left

6 December 06
The didactic project on visual arts, designed to contribute to animation of the 'Canal en Fête' event in September 2007, is available for downloading here.

18 August 06
Blue Links at IWA festival. The Blue Links project will have its stand (No. A46) at the 2006 IWA National Festival & Boat Show, in order to promote canal restoration and inland navigation through the continent. From 26th to 28th August.

18 August 06
Partner's study tour. Some of the Blue Links partners' representatives will visit key canal development sites in the UK on 28th and 29th August. This will include a visit to the IWA national waterways festival.

3 July 06
The 'Rendez-vous du Canal' will take place on the 8th and 9th of July. Festive happenings, not to forget!

17 May 06 2006
Locks. Works completed on the French side.

9 May 06
The chief executive of Nord 'département' and the managers of the Blue Links partners visited the Roubaix canal restoration works today, especially Union lock, Grande Vigne bridge (which will have its new deck installed tomorrow) and the PCUK dredging disposal area.

End April 2006
Locks on Roubaix canal. The gate opening and closing tests will be carried out during the last week of April. On that occasion, the summit level pound will be rewatered to its normal operating level.

April 18 2006
Placing of the deck of bridge 'de la Grande Vigne' to take place during the first week of May

...See the news archive

Blue Links, a leading EU-funded project for sustainable canal restoration

The restored canal from the Deûle to the Escaut will be a significant resource for tourism and leisure activities, associated with urban regeneration over a vast area. The Blue Links project is a programme of works aiming to restore navigation on the Deûle - Escaut link. The Deûle - Escaut link is the canalised river Marque plus the Roubaix canal, in the North 'région' of France and the Espierre canal, in Hainaut and West Flanders in Belgium. This comprehensive renovation programme is made possible by the mobilisation of the European Commission and various local authorities and public bodies in France and Belgium... > read more

Inaugural event in September 2009! At their steering committee meeting on 24 October 2008, the Blue Links partners decided to organise a major event to inaugurate the canal on the week-end of 19/20 September 2009. By that date, the underpass below the Couteaux roundabout will have been completed, or at least works will have progressed to a stage allowing the canal to be reopened. The canal will be opened at least one week before the event, to give boats taking part time to reach one of the designated mooring points. Procedures for registering to participate in the event will soon be published on this site.    Focus Critical to completion of the project was the dredging and disposal of almost 200 000 m3 of sediment… Silted Roubaix canal > read more Works update  Works in progress Cleaning and repairing Estaimpuis lock, on the Espierres canal > read more  Opinions and ideas  Read comments and ideas from our visitors and from users of canals, and give your own advice and opinion for the Blue Links project. > go there

The Deûle-Escaut waterway is a key link in the centre of the 20 000 km network of inland waterways of North West Europe. > maps of the waterway or download the map presented at the press conference on 10/10/08 Press conference on October 10, 2008 Grimonpont lift bridge The communes of Estaimpuis, Leers and Wattrelos hosted on 10 October 2008 a press conference which attracted about 50 people, including journalists from the local and national Press and TV. The event was organised to show the extent of the works completed since the Blue Links project started in 2005. In reality, many of the works could not begin until 2007 or even 2008, because of the highly complex procedures for the studies, administrative procedures and subsequent tendering. Welcomed at the Maison du Canal in Estaimpuis, the partners each presented their components of the project to about 15 journalists, before walking along the towpath to visit two key sites close to the border: the new Grimonpont lift bridge and the filter basins. Slimane Tir, vice-president of Lille Métropole in charge of the metropolitan parks department, took a small boat generously made available by the MET's depot in Comines, to be interviewed en route by France 3. > see the pictures of the press release   Context BlueLinks2008.org gives regular updates on works in progress on the link, leading up to the inauguration in 2008. >plans for the inaugural event The movement to restore the canals abandoned by commercial traffic began in the UK 60 years ago. Now, in major metropolitan areas, canal restoration for leisure and tourism has become a key issue for mobility as well as for urban regeneration... > read more Locks on the Roubaix canal