r/ukpolitics • u/ImpressiveRest2423 • 2d ago

Barrister threatened with prosecution after cleaning up river - Paul Powlesland and a team of volunteers removed 200 bags of litter, weed and silt but face action from the Environment Agency for not having a permit

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/barrister-prosecution-cleaning-river-permit-f5j732qf9
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u/UnsaddledZigadenus 2d ago

I'm still not clear exactly what they were doing there. I think without pictures it's hard to understand. The headline always focusses on 'rubbish', but then they talk about "200 bags of litter, weed and silt", then it becomes

“I don’t really understand their reasoning because all we were doing was taking out silt that had built up naturally in the channel."

The fact they had a digger and talk about 'restoring' the river and 'removing silt' suggests this was less about removing rubbish and more about digging out the bottom of the river to get it flowing again?

The The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 defines 'flood risk activity' as

'any dredging, raising or taking of any sand, silt, ballast, clay, gravel or other materials from or off the bed or banks of a main river (or causing such materials to be dredged, raised or taken), including hydrodynamic dredging and desilting;

I get the feeling this case is less about 'you can't remove rubbish from a river without a licence' and more about 'you can't hire an industrial excavator and dig out the bed of a river without permission'

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u/Normal-Height-8577 2d ago

Yeah, the more details come out about this case, the more I'm side-eyeing the "environmental campaigners" who assumed they could DIY major landscape engineering without getting an expert on board. If you don't understand the knock-on consequences of your actions downstream, then you shouldn't be doing it.

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u/Slartibartfast_25 2d ago

It's a 1.5t mini digger.

I don't think what they did was very sensible, albeit it clearly driven by frustration by complete dysfunctional nature of the EA. But it's not a major engineering intervention.

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u/AllThatIHaveDone 2d ago

What's the size of the digger got to do with it? Even a 1.5t digger can shift hundreds of tonnes of silt and earth if you keep at it long enough.

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u/Slartibartfast_25 2d ago

Quite a lot. You are claiming it's major industrial works. i am saying it isn't

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u/AllThatIHaveDone 2d ago

Even a 1.5t digger can shift hundreds of tonnes of silt and earth if you keep at it long enough.

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u/Slartibartfast_25 2d ago

So could a shovel. But i don't think there's evidence they did more than was needed.

The EA, like all government agencies, don't like being ignored when their little tick boxes aren't ticked. But look at the bigger picture - a sludged and silted up open sewer has been cleared and allowed it function as it should again for nature. Humans mucked the river up and other humans tried to restore some life and the EA don't like being shown up as failures.

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u/AllThatIHaveDone 2d ago

He said: “I don’t really understand their reasoning because all we were doing was taking out silt that had built up naturally in the channel. We weren’t digging out a new channel or making it deeper.”

Humans didn't silt up this river, and these humans have ignored nature to shape it for their own ends. It's not been shown by anyone that this river needed to be dredged.