First-Ever Rotating Boat Brings Life Back to the Canals

An ambitious project designed to connect Scotland’s canals has rejuvenated the once-abandoned-and-highly-polluted water pathways, bringing them back to life and improving their surroundings.

“The canal corridors connect lochs and reservoirs, but also wildlife populations, and communities – both with nature and with each other,” explains Chris O’Connell, the heritage manager and resident historian for Scottish Canals, a public corporation of the Scottish government charged with caring for the country’s five canals – Forth and Clyde, Union, Caledonian, Crinan, and Monkland.

In 1999, the $93 million project Millennium Link was accepted and included the construction of the Falkirk Wheel, a first-of-its-kind giant rotating boat that reconnected the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal for the first time in decades. It took two years to build and required the participation of ecologists, construction workers, cleanup crews, and contractors. Once used as a dumping site, the canals are safe to swim in today. Recreation returned to the canals – such as boating clubs, crew team boathouses, and waterfront cafés – and art projects burgeoned along them. It has been shown that people living within 750 yards of the canals have lower risks of heart diseases, diabetes, and hypertension than citizens who live further away.