Fun observation: it's always interesting to see people named very relevantly to their jobs:

> “Technology has moved on considerably since the excavation of the first canal in the 1850s,” said the study’s author, Iver Shovel.

I guess when all you have is a shovel, everything looks like a canal to dig

Ok - since then it has been brought to my attention that this story is an April's fool joke. Too late to delete, so I'm going to leave this here for all posterity...

And "Mo Sez, a regional expert in water division management" :-)