Canal

Canals and navigations are human-made channels for water. In the vernacular both are referred to as 'canals'. The main difference between them is that a navigation parallels a river and shares its drainage basin, while a canal cuts across a drainage divide.

Types of artificial waterways

A navigation is a series of channels that run roughly parallel to the valley and stream bed of an unimproved river. A navigation always shares the drainage basin of the river. A vessel uses the calm parts of the river itself as well as improvements, traversing the same changes in height.

A true canal is a channel that cuts across a drainage divide, making a navigable channel connecting two different drainage basins.

Most commercially important canals of the first half of the 19th-century were a little of each, using rivers in long stretches, and divide crossing canals in others. This is true for many canals still in use.

Structures used in artificial waterways

Both navigations and canals use engineered structures to improve navigation:

Polish language

Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is a Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages. Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the official languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż). Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Lower Sorbian, Upper Sorbian, Czech and Slovak.

Although the Austrian, German and Russian administrations exerted much pressure on the Polish nation (during the 19th and early 20th centuries) following the Partitions of Poland, which resulted in attempts to suppress the Polish language, a rich literature has regardless developed over the centuries and the language currently has the largest number of speakers of the West Slavic group. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian and just ahead of Ukrainian, which comes third.

Canal Generating Plant

The Canal Generating Plant is a petroleum and natural gas electrical power station located in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Opened in 1968, and first operating with coal, the plant was bought by Mirant in 1999. It is located on and named after the Cape Cod Canal. Though today functioning only as a peaking plant, the Canal plant formerly generated the vast majority of the cape's power in its hayday.

The plant's owner has proposed a project to modernize the plant and keep it relevant by constructing a 330 megawatt combined cycle natural gas plant on the site which would be a combined-cycle natural gas unit capable of starting up within 10 minutes as well as a 1.5 MW solar array on the property. The third unit would have the ability to run on liquid fuel during cold periods in the winter when the natural gas pipelines are constrained. This project was reportedly chosen over repowering one of the oil units with natural gas.

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