Land & Water Services has officially started its work on transforming Titford Pools in Oldbury.
Hidden away under the M5 motorway, Titford Pools is located along the Titford Canal and is part of the Birmingham Canal Navigations – which this year is celebrating its 250th birthday.
The pools are a quirky surprise to anyone exploring the end of the Titford Canal in Oldbury and over the years they have become silted up which is affecting the water quality and impacting on the amount and variety of wildlife visiting the pools.
“Constructed originally as a small reservoir in the 1770s to feed the Titford Canal, today it feeds water to the wider local canal network and to Edgbaston Reservoir in Birmingham. However, it suffers from inflows of poor water quality leading to a lack of biodiversity,” said Land & Water in its latest announcement.
Over the past two weeks, Land & Water Services has successfully dredged 7,587 tonnes of material and cleared 23,100m³ from the pools.
Stop planks and silt screens have also been installed to protect the wider network from the works being undertaken.
As part of the £3.1 million project, their team will remove contaminated sediment, improve the towpath network and install some bank protection.