Canal de la Haute-Saône

Canal de la Haute-Saône
	The Frahier harbor basin
Water code	FR : undefined
location	France, Franche-Comte region
length	23 km
Built	1882-1926
class	<I.
Beginning	Branch from the Rhine-Rhône Canal at Fesches-le-Châtel
The End	at Ronchamp
Descent structures	14th
Kilometrage	Towards botans
	currently navigable over a length of 12.5 kilometers to the port of Botans
	The canal at Frahier

The Canal de la Haute-Saône (German: Haute-Saône Canal ) is a French shipping canal that begins in the north of the Doubs department , crosses the southwest of the Territoire de Belfort and whose unfinished section was planned as a connection to the Haute-Saône department . The aim was to connect the Canal du Rhône au Rhin (German: Rhine-Rhône Canal ) with the upper Saône .
Alternative names:

Canal de Montbéliard à la Haute-Saône
Canal de Belfort

The length of the at least partially realized section is 23 kilometers and includes:

a reservoir for dewatering
a trough bridge
a tunnel of 640 meters in length
a tunnel 1330 meters long
9 canal bridges
14 locks

history

After the loss of Alsace in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 , the government of the Third Republic decided to build canals in eastern France to allow goods to flow between the areas of Nancy , Burgundy and Franche-Comté . First the Canal de l'Est (today: Canal des Vosges ) was built, which was completed around 1887. At the same time, the construction of the Canal de la Haute-Saône began, which was to include the part that had remained French between the Canal du Rhône au Rhin and the Canal de l'Est. The aim was also to build an efficient connection to the Ronchamp coal mines .

In 1881 the project was largely defined and approved by the government. Construction began in 1882, but the difficulties encountered in digging through the tunnels and negotiating the deep trenches soon showed that the budget originally planned was underestimated. As additional loans were only approved very slowly, the construction project dragged on and could not be completed before the First World War . Since Alsace fell back to France after the end of the war, the canal project no longer made sense and it was therefore discontinued. The already completed section between Botans and the confluence with the Rhine-Rhône Canal (12.5 kilometers) was put into operation in 1926.

This port served as a coal port for Belfort until the 1970s . Since May 2018 this part of the canal from Dambenois has also been closed to shipping. The reasons for this are the increasing leaks and high maintenance costs. However, the banks of the canal have become a popular recreational area for the residents of Belfort and Montbéliard . The Champagney Basin was built as a water reservoir (13 million cubic meters) to regulate the water level in the canal. It currently forms a lake that is very popular with fishermen and local bathers.

course

One can distinguish three parts:

the section between Fesches-le-Châtel and Dambenois that is actually in operation
the section between Botans and Ronchamp, which has only been partially built
the section between Ronchamp and the Saône, which never got beyond the planning stage