Algae cleared from Walsall Waterfront after recent canal falls

Businesses at Walsall Waterfront are calling better safety measures to be installed after a series of incidents where visitors have fallen in at the moorings near New Art Gallery.

In the latest incident six people, including two children, ended up in the water last Tuesday, with four needing hospital treatment.

Now staff at nearby businesses have wrapped the moorings with red and white coloured safety tape in an effort to alert pedestrians to the water, which has been covered in a layer of algae that resembles turf or grass and led to people mistakenly thinking they can walk across it.

Walsall Council leader Councillor Mike Bird told the Express & Star: “The Waterfront has multiple landowners. Now that this latest issue has been brought to my attention, I will be looking into it.”

Donna Harrison, a worker, at Bar10, in Wolverhampton Street, said she had written to the Canals and Rivers Trust with a request for extra safety measures to be put in place at the site after more than a dozen people have been involved in water incidents at the location in recent times.

Miss Harrison said: “This is not a new problem. There is evidence of issues with the basin going back well over a decade. Two cars have been driven into it. We can’t concentrate on our jobs as we’re are constantly looking out of our windows to check if anyone has fallen in when we should be getting on with serving customers. That can’t be right.

“We have been in contact with the canal trust to see if they can do more and they have said they cleared all of the algae last year, but it has now grown back. The trouble is it looks like astro turf to children who may not realise the danger.”

She also appealed for donations of items spare clothing which can be loaned to those who are helped out of the water in future, to be left that bar.

Canal & River Trust said it was reminding pedestrians to stay away from the edge and that a safety buoy had been installed in the middle of the basin to warn that the water is deep and to take care when walking next to the basin. It also said that trust workers and a team of volunteers were due to remove weeds were being removed from the basin.

“We are aware that there is a section of the basin covered in weed, making it look like thick grass, hiding the water underneath.

“Although a lot of the weed has already been removed, it grows quickly and is difficult to control,” it said.