this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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People without training and coordination with a larger system can cause problems, especially if he encourages other untrained people to do it.
It sucks but there’s billions of us so it’s gonna suck. At least that’s what my local councilman (and dad) said when I complained I needed to ask permission to change my deck.
Two years in prison is stupid though. Make him work with the groups who have approved plans.
And I hate that this is the answer I’m giving but honestly it’s the only thing keeping me from renting a bulldozer and making my neighborhood walkable.
I feel like this is only justifiable if the officials aren’t given time to act. It would be one thing if he fired off an email and ran out and did this the next day, but according to the article he spent years contacting officials before doing it himself. If they want to live by perfect world rules where stuff like this is overseen and coordinated with experts then they need to do it in a timely manner. It’s unreasonable to expect people to live in an area full of garbage for years and just do nothing about it.
I like this argument because there’s a right to petition the government, and to a timely trial.
I get that the official body probably didn't have the resources to be able to clean it up, but imagine if there had been a compromise solution in which volunteers could have done this work but with the guidance of a professional, sanctioned by that official body. That seems like it could have been the best of both worlds. It's a shame that this ended up as it did
Just make sure to up armour it if you do.
Cue the A-Team montage music
I advise studying the Killdozer event to prepare for your montage!
I pity the fool who ain’t studied Killdozer
if they didnt want the hazmat to be a hazard they shouldn’t let it into the river; this way people won’t have to risk lives to clean it up. from this firefighters pov - i can understand how dangerous it is to work around rivers but imho i am happy to hope the damages to a person voluntarily working to clean up an organization’s messes will, after trial, be paid by the said org.
i know that’s not gonna happen. i just.. it fucking sucks this fucking country.
Somebody didn't read the article. The problem is flood risk from dredging (in the UK)
This is sad, but also understandable.
I totally agree that the punishment is unnecessarily harsh, but well meaning people can cause damage while trying to do good. The road to hell and all that.
Those responsible for maintaining the area not doing their job is a separate, and I'd say more serious, matter.
Yeah you need to run an environmental impact study and a 6 month observational survey to determine the long term impacts of removing pollution from the environment.
Your councilman is trash. I don't want to encourage bulldozing a neighborhood but you're right to feel that way. Then again, I do encourage making places walkable so you'd get critical support from me. Just get utilities marked so you don't hit a gas line.
It's not just "removing pollution" it's dredging the entire riverbed. That releases silt, and anything contained in the silt, to flow downstream and collect elsewhere. It can smother fish eggs, it can clog infrastructure, it can kill plants and invertebrates .
I don't think this dredging means machine based digging on the riverbed in this case. 200bags over 10 days. That's manual labor.
If the city wasn't even considering the residents requests then i don't blame them. The city should do better if they're concerned about flooding and fund a proper survey and cleanup plan to facilitate the citizen action.
There's videos of them with a backhoe scraping the river bed and indiscriminately hacking up plants on the riverbank. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.