This is not yet another underhand knocking piece about our former Deputy Prime Minister who I think has been so unfairly pilloried by the press, largely because of his adherence to his working class origins and some habits which are rather too easy to make fun of, not least a complete inability to construct a coherent sentence, always jumping off to another thought before reaching a conclusion. But I really think Prescott deserves praise as the first UK politician in power to take environmental issues at all seriously.
But so far as I know he played no part in the creation of the Prescott Folly, officially known as ‘The Three Mills Lock‘ and a part of the “greenwash” around our 2012 Olympic Games bid. The lock was to enable huge amounts of building materials and waste to be transferred in and out of the Stratford site over the river/canal system already existing there, but previously only navigable by small craft around high tide. Actually even although the new lock will keep up water levels above it, there isn’t a great deal downstream at low tide, so I’m not sure what a great difference there will be.
The Prescott Channel, named after a long-forgotten chair of the Lee Conservancy Board, was constructed in the 1930s as a part of a flood prevention scheme, which also involved the construction of several new locks designed for navigation but which were seldom if ever used.
2010 sees history repeating, as although a barge was loaded with waste in June to take to Rainham for disposal I suspect this was a photo-op rather than the start of real operations and there seems to be little use currently being made of this £19 million lock. The barge for those pictures on the Waterworks River is the 250 tonne Ursula Katherine from Bennett’s Barges. The only pictures of a barge I’ve found elsewhere on the system, apart from a few narrow boats (and they used to occasionally make it before the lock was built) are all of the single barge from the opening event – and I’ve even searched Flickr.
The Olympic Development Authority already claims to be more than meeting its target for movement by rail and water using rail alone. So they don’t need the barges. But it would be nice to see one going through now and then.
But even though it is perhaps unlikely to have much of a role in the concretisation of the area taking place for the Olympics, the lock does have two roles which will be critically important in the aftermath, when property developers will be scrabbling for easy profits. It will enable the flows of sewage that occur into the Lower Lea during storms to be prevented from flowing upstream on the tide into the Olympic area, and will also prevent the flooding that can currently occur on much riverside land.
Which is of course good news for British Waterways as it converts considerable areas of riverside land that they own from open wasteland into highly desirable development opportunities. But had they proposed the plan for this reason it seems unlikely it would ever have been started. Folly is hardly the word to describe it; deception would be more accurate.
I had been hoping to cycle on the footpath along the side of the river along the ‘Long Wall’ from Three Mills to the new lock, and then to continue over the bridge at the lock and on to the Northern Outfall Sewer. Both paths were closed, supposedly for six months, for the construction of the lock. The lock was completed months ago, but the paths remain closed.
You can see more pictures of the lock and the area around on My London Diary.