"Strudwick.Family" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >BW is not a monopoly supplier as there are a large number of alternative >suppliers of navigable water around the country. It is true that they >have a local monopoly. i.e. they are the only supplier in the Hartford >area.
Or even in the Hertford area. Moving right along, though, the two sentence in your paragraph above are contradictory, and anyway I need to moor/navigate in the Hertford area so I am faced with a monopoly. A local monopoly is a monopoly. . >Personally I think that the additional charge for wide boats should not >apply to rivers (as defined in the BW act) but is reasonable for those >who block up the canals requiring additional work by BW to close tunnels >so they can pass through, dredge the channel to as wider profile and >cut back overhanging trees. No vessel larger than a waterway's gauge should be admitted to that waterway. In most cases, they physically can't use it, of course, so this isn't an issue.. Vessels smaller than the gauge will not "block up the canals" or require "BW to close tunnels", as they are of a size that the waterway was built to accommodate. Dredging should always be to original profile, which will maintain a channel large enought for craft of gauge dimensions to use the waterway just fine. Overhanging trees should always be cut back. Both those activities are simply normal maintenance. Roughly the same amount of silt is deposited in a given length of waterway each year. Certainly each ten years. Trees grow about the same amount each year. So, on average, the same amount ot silt and vegetation has to be removed each year on average. So there is no additional cost to accommodate larger craft. So larger craft should not be charged more. Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
