It is really good news that water authority and Monmouthshire Brecon Canal & River Trust has reached an agreement which will stop the canal from running dry in the very near future – as was a real possibility.

Many of you will have spent time on the canal, walking the towpath, boating, or fishing. The once-busy waterway is an asset to the county and a significant wildlife habitat.

And now me and my team are working to bring bodies together to ensure that we have something more than a stop-gap agreement.

The background is this: the canal has relied on taking water from the River Usk since losing it original water supply when the A467 was built in 1969. Like all canals, there has been leakage, landslips and damage, quite apart from the inevitable loss of water through boat use in locks.

The current legal dispute arises because of water license legislation brought in to protect the habitats of the River Usk. So we are working towards ensuring that the water authority, Dwr Cymru, together with Natural Resources Wales and the Canal & River Trust can work together collaboratively and creatively to safeguard our rivers, our drinking water, and our canal. So many local tourism businesses rely on a viable canal.

I have written to the leaders of Powys, Torfaen and Newport Councils, the other local authority areas through which the canal flows, to get their support. And I have arranged a meeting with the Welsh Government.

The Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority will, I am sure, be making similar representations. And our MPs and Senedd members, have shown that they share our concern. So let us hope that this will result in to a long-term solution.

We cannot countenance the demise of our canal which was built in the 1790s and 1800s. It is an engineering marvel, clinging as it does to the hillsides of the Usk valley, and built to take coal, limestone, iron and manufactured goods to Newport Docks.

Its survival is a tribute to the people who originally built it. And now to the tenacity of the volunteers of the trusts who rescued it after closure as a fully working waterway in1964. It is a wonderful piece of our industrial heritage.