How does contamination barrier work?

[It's a Mind Game]

So in my screenshot I think that the bad water is touching only ground that has contamination barriers built, but it is still somehow spreading all around my canal.
Is building those barries inside of the canal useless?
Should I have built them around the canal and how does that make sense?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3356559352

[Voilodion]

Originally posted by It's a Mind Game:

Originally posted by Cara:

I agree with the OP that it isn't intuitive that the barriers should be used this way. I would have thought that the levees would be enough to stop seepage through the sides, and the barriers would be used to stop seepage from below. After all, Weren't the levees changed to block irrigation (ie. good seepage) and nerf the water dump irrigation exploit?

They definitely don't leak, because you don't see any when it is an aqueduct with levees on the side and impermeable floor.

I get it that devs want badwater to be a difficulty modifier (and a resource), but for a game about fluid management, this is a really poor design choice. And like I said, it isn't hard to just dump the badwater on the edge of the map, so if players want, they can easily cheese it. I designed my canal in the most intuitive way and got punished for it. Should have just made U-turn and dump it, would save me a lot of time and resources, but would look dumb (just like the current contamination barries do).

The most intuitive way to design a canal would be to put the piece called "Impermeable FLOOR" on the FLOOR of the canal. You keep saying it's poor design and doesn't make sense and is agony for engineers, but somehow most of the other people commenting here understood exactly how it works.

And I don't know what you think looks dumb about the contamination barrier but the texture had to go on top of the block since most of the time we're looking down at our worlds and we need to be able to see that it's there.

[Voilodion]

Originally posted by Cara:

I agree with the OP that it isn't intuitive that the barriers should be used this way. I would have thought that the levees would be enough to stop seepage through the sides, and the barriers would be used to stop seepage from below. After all, Weren't the levees changed to block irrigation (ie. good seepage) and nerf the water dump irrigation exploit?

Levees do stop seepage through the sides, and always did so. What was changed with irrigation is the radius of irrigation provided by a single block of dirt that has water on top of it.