It is suspended during the fall and winter each year, freezing the boats’ positions. Interrupted since November, river navigation resumes this Friday April 5 on all the canals of Brittany. For this 2024 vintage, the region announces that it is the first in France to have deployed water and electricity terminals on all 580 kilometers of canals for which it is responsible.
Through this choice, the community hopes to “support the decarbonization of the river fleet” which is gradually converting to electric, particularly for rental. This new offer is also aimed at owners of barges and inhabited boats, who will be able to connect to dry land.
If navigation can reopen, it is because the winter upkeep and maintenance work on the locks could have been carried out. To activate the crossings, 60 lock agents and 140 seasonal workers will officiate this year in Brittany to operate the approximately 90,000 passages through the locks. In recent years, use of the canals has continued to increase, whether on the water or on the towpaths that border them.
The neighboring Pays-de-la-Loire region also announced the reopening of navigation between Nort-sur-Erdre and Saint-Nicolas-de-Redon, exceptionally closed in 2023 due to the emptying of the Vioreau reservoir. The filling of the lake continues but will undoubtedly be insufficient to keep navigation open until the fall.
For more than a year, the Loire-Atlantique department has been undertaking major work on the Vioreau dam in Joué-sur-Erdre which required the reservoir to be drained. “Thanks to heavy rainfall at the start of the year, the water in the reservoir today rises to a height of 6.30 m (the maximum limit being 9.10 m),” specifies the department.