Written: 26th Jul 2010 | Last Updated: 26th Jul 2010
One of the major complaints made about the fleets of tourist boats that ply France’s Canal du Midi every year is that everything that gets poured down sink or shower drains, or flushed down toilets, drops straight into the shallow, 240 kilometre-long canal. While modern marine toilets do a very good job of shredding paper and mashing solids, that does not entitle thousands of travellers to urinate and defecate into this remarkable UNESCO World Heritage site; from a health perspective alone, such voluminous dumping can only be labelled a disgrace.
While the canal is not a natural river per se, it mimics one, passing - aided by an incredible system of locks - through extraordinarily beautiful farmlands, vineyards, historic cities, towns and villages. It is a major feature in the south of France, a source of considerable pride, and a provider of important tourist Euros. And incredibly, people still catch fish for human consumption, something most couldn’t justify once they’d seen the opaque, poo-brown of the flow and the clusters of dead fish trapped at lock gates. That fish survive at all in this bacterial bath is testament to their resilience, but healthy water it is not, and this totally unnecessary situation must be addressed by investing in a very simple solution: that is, insist that all tourist boats and barges, large and small, commercial and private, use holding tanks.
The drawback of holding tanks is that you have to empty them, meaning at various points along the canal there would have to be easy-to-access pump-out stations; it’s not a popular prospect, as it is time-consuming and would involve considerable investment by either boat charter companies, local government works departments or both. But logically, there is no other way to deal with this stinky predicament. Dumping millions of litres of raw sewage into the Midi - a remarkable monument to foresight and brilliance in engineering - is just not acceptable.
Ironically, the boat we hired from Castelnaudary was fitted with a holding tank - but the toilets, showers and sink drains were not connected to it because everyone turns a blind eye and puts everything (at no extra cost) into the canal…and they get away with it because THEY CAN! I’m guessing most of the modern fleets based along the canal are similarly equipped - they are manufactured with tanks because in most cruising grounds around the world, dumping of sewage from pleasure boats is strictly forbidden. As simple as that! Sailors fill their tanks, and then empty them as required. It’s just something one factors into a boating holiday.
While often such unpleasant topics get swept under the carpet - or in this case, scraped from the bottom when the canal is emptied and cleaned - this one deserves to be viewed from a wider perspective:
The Powers That Be MUST Clean Up The Midi - not only for visitors who choose to holiday along it, but more importantly for people who choose to live and work beside it, and the creatures - fish, otters, birds - that make this waterway their home.
Vive la France...and vive la difference that holding tanks will make to the Midi!