Waterways of the Seine basin. The Ourcq and the Ourcq canal are to the north-east of Paris.
Along the forest park of Sevran, a trench had to be dug to pass the canal.
Before starting at Mareuil-sur-Ourcq to join the Villette basin in Paris, the Ourcq river is canalized and navigable from the “Port aux Perches” in the town of Silly-la-Poterie.
With the Canal Saint-Denis, the Bassin de la Villette and the Canal Saint-Martin, it constitutes the network of Parisian canals, 130 km long and belonging to the city of Paris. Its construction began in 1802 and was completed in 1825. It was subsequently subject to several changes including the addition of five locks, a factory supplying the water to the canal at Trilbardou and the widening of the gauge on the first eleven kilometers.
Originally, the main objective of the canal was to supply Paris with drinking water; today, its use is reserved for roads. Until the 1960s, it was traversed over its entire length by the Ourcq flutes, barges adapted to the small size of most of the canal. Since 1962, only the first eleven kilometers, between the basin of Villette and Aulnay-sous-Bois, free of locks, have been open to commercial traffic: approximately one million tonnes are transported each year by barges, the deadweight of which are cannot exceed 400 tonnes. Beyond that, the canal, whose depth is now 80 cm, is intended for yachting. The Ourcq canal has also been used since its creation to supply the Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis canals with water. Since the end of the 1990s, the surroundings of the canal located in the Parisian agglomeration have been rehabilitated and developed to make it a green axis open to leisure activities such as cycle tourism and hiking.