dohboi wrote:Good points, T and PS.
The Erie/Ohio Canal wasn't abandoned till the 1960s, so it wasn't just rail but highways that it was competing with. As highways become less useful, even if rail is still used, these canals may be seen as valuable ways to move people and goods again.
It seems to me that, if you could manage water flow carefully, it might be possible to have some flow across relatively flat stretches of the canal (with no intervening locks) so that when traffic needs to flow one direction, water flows in that direction. Then, when you need to have traffic flow the other direction, the flow would go that way.
All it would take would be for both ends of the canal to have substantial enough streams running into them there or near by that large retaining pools could be built. These would collect water when the canal is flowing toward it, and then let it out to establish a flow going the other way.
In this way, you could get transportation across substantial distances, if rather slow, essentially for free, enrgy-wise (no energy input needed except for that necessary to open and close sluice gate), as long as the rivers and streams flowed with water (a more and more iffy proposition, going forward, unfortunately.
(But this is just random guess work. Probably if it were viable, someone would have been doing it already.)
The Pennsylvania Canal system far exceeded the engineering achievements of the Erie Canal and was full of records and firsts. In its prime, it had almost 1,400 miles of canal - the most in the United States. There was a 1,140 foot aqueduct that crossed the Allegheny River just above Pittsburgh. The country's first railroad tunnel, the Staple Bend Tunnel near Johnstown, was drilled and blasted through 900 feet of solid rock. A second tunnel of over 800 feet went under Grant's Hill in Pittsburgh and linked with the Monongahela River. There were 168 locks. Elevation went from near sea level in Philadelphia to 2,430 feet on Cresson Mountain to 720 feet at the junction of the three rivers in Pittsburgh. These were all noteworthy achievements that exceeded anything that had been done before but the engineering crown jewel of the Main Line was the Allegheny Portage Railroad.
dohboi wrote:Thanks for the interesting history lesson, PS. (I generally suck and American history, unfortunately.)
But wouldn't Brownsville or some other place on the Monongahela have been a bit closer than Steubenville? Or is the Monongahela not navigable that far up?
Location
Locks and Dam 2 is located across from Sharpsburg, Aspinwall and Etna, downstream from the Highland Park Bridge.
History
Construction began on Lock 2 in 1932 and continued until 1935. It was opened for navigation in October 1934, replacing the original lock built at river mile 7.0 between 1902-1908.
Project Information
Lock and Dam 2, like all navigation facilities on the Allegheny, consists of a single lock chamber and a fixed crest dam. This type of dam is basically a concrete weir or wall across the river which keeps the river channel upriver of the project deep enough for navigation -- about 9 feet or more.
Water which flows over this type of dam cannot be controlled locally. Consequently, it cannot provide any control over flood waters. An incidental benefit derived from the pool formed by the dam is the availability of a source of municipal and industrial water.
dohboi wrote:Thanks, PS. I've looked down at Pittsburgh from that bluff!
The Erie/Ohio Canal wasn't abandoned till the 1960s
The New York State Canal System (formerly known as the New York State Barge Canal) is a successor to the Erie Canal and other canals within New York. Currently, the 525-mile (845 km) system is composed of the Erie Canal, the Oswego Canal, the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, and the Champlain Canal. In 2014 the system was listed as a national historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in its entirety.
The Erie Canal connects the Hudson River to Lake Erie; the Cayuga-Seneca Canal connects Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake to the Erie Canal; the Oswego Canal connects the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario; and the Champlain Canal connects the Hudson River to Lake Champlain.
(snip)
Today, the system's canals are 12 feet (3.7 m) deep and 120 feet (37 m) wide, with 57 electrically operated locks, and can accommodate vessels up to 2,000 tons (1,800 metric tons). The canal system is open for navigation generally from May 1 through November 15.
we sang that song in grade school back in the 60's.dohboi wrote:On the other hand, the song was written in 1905, long before the Erie and Ohio Canal closed, so maybe it was called that because it was the most important canal to New Yorkers, and they kind of determined what gets called what??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Bridge_%28song%29
dohboi wrote:vt--interesting. I'll have to read up more on that. Any suggestions?
...For decades, mine operators in Northern Canada have stored waste rock and tailings waste—the "pulverized rock slurry" byproduct of mineral processing that's filled with skeevy chemicals like arsenic, lead, and mercury—in frozen dams reinforced with permafrost, an option far cheaper than constructing artificial structures to house the goop. But if such walls thaw, allowing air and water to interact with the highly reactive tailings, widespread "acid mine drainage" (AMD) could occur. Such a process can generate sulphuric acid and result in the leaching of heavy metals into nearby soil and water sources.
"Permafrost degradation is going to affect everything," says Magdalena Muir, research associate at the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America. "When you have frozen infrastructure, you don't have to build an artificial structure and probably get used to not having to worry too much about breaches. But as soon as you have soil that behaves just like any other soil, you have all the issues you'd have in southern Canada."
The Canadian mining sector produces around one million tons of waste rock and 950,000 tons of tailings per day. As a result, the prospect of widespread AMD could be disastrous for the Canadian North: such scenarios would obviously be nightmares to contain, with the remoteness and cold climate seriously impeding cleanup. Think the Deepwater Horizon of the Arctic, except not nearly as visible and minus the dead dolphins to draw attention to the disaster. And like methane bubbling out of the permafrost, the situation only gets worse as it unfolds.
"Once a chemical process is underway—let's say, the oxidization of mining waste and leaching of heavy metals and acid drainage—it's much, much harder to stop that chemical process than just preventing it from the outset," says Ugo Lapointe, Canadian coordinator for MiningWatch. "It has its own momentum once it starts. Also, the plume of contamination downstream or underground are much harder to clean up and control once it starts, it's very, very costly."....
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