Korean Canal Project - part 4 - France example

Two last posting is going to telling us about one of the canal construction benefit for leisure, business, or any other economical advantage regarding to a city waterways system. Rotterdam and Seoul are a good example to represent the city waterway system. I will post another example after I review one big canal project in Europe in the year 2008.

France, a country in Europe, is one example to represent a country with a lot of canal. In total, there are 14.932 km of waterways and 6.969 km are heavily traveled. Reader can refer to wikipedia to get the name list of canal in France. (source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canals_in_France).

Picture on the left is one of the canal in France, called The Grand Canal of Alsace. The length is about 50 km, placed in the eastern of France. This canal provides access for barges from the Rhine river, Basel (Switzerland) and the North Sea. One of the advantages of establishing this canal is to produce hydroelectric power at city called Kembs and Ottmarsheim, to supply electricity to the region that occupied by heavy industry in France. But, the canal which was began constructed at 1932, also have disadvantages that is ruined the ecology of the area permanently.

There are still many other canal, small size until big size canal, in the country that bordering the Mediterranean Sea. And, they will develop many other canal to boost the country's economic growth.

One canal that is under construction is called by Seine-Nord Europe Canal. This project is set to begin in 2008. The canal will start from the Oise River at Janville to the Dunkirk-Escaut Canal. The total length will be 105 km. It is said that this canal will be a high capacity water transportation system in France since the recent transportation bring out CO2 emission and traffic congestion. The project leader of this canal reported that 1500 containers unloaded in the port is equal to 1000 trucks on the road or 25 fully-loaded goods trains, but it's only for 5 vessels.

We may see that France is a country that become a hub in EU. The development of the canal may bring many benefit to the surrounded EU country. We may see that even the development of previous canal ruin permanently the environment, but for sure, French researcher consider it deeply to establish the canal that brings controversially discussion regarding environment issue. However, every single problem should be solved by the knowledge ability of human being who is talented-given by the Creator of life.