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I know nobody ever reads the article but it still makes me despair every time.
For that transgression, the environmental regulator sent Powlesland a notice informing him that he’s been placed under investigation for “permitting and waste offences.”
He was given a notice. Not only has he NOT been sentenced to 2 years, he hasn't even been charged. He's been told he broke a law, for which the maximum penalty that a judge is permitted to give is listed as 2 years.
Working over ten days, they hired an excavator costing roughly £1,000 and cleared a heavily polluted 250 metre stretch of Alders Brook, a tributary of the River Roding in Barking, East London.
The main issue is that he used heavy machinery for cleanup. If it was by hand it probably wouldn't have resulted in any legal matter
Is 2 years ridiculous? Probably. But using an excavator for cleaning is definitely not a smart move for someone who's a lawyer
For reference an excavator is one of the construction machine with the hydraulic hand that is used to dig or grab stuff
The main issue is that he used heavy machinery for cleanup. If it was by hand it probably wouldn't have resulted in any legal matter
Yeah, he went way beyond simply removing trash:
The team removed more than 200 bags of rubbish along with branches, thick layers of silt, weeds, discarded household appliances, used needles and even abandoned weapons. Their goal was to restore the natural flow of the water and remove years of accumulated waste.
He basically dug up the entire riverbed. That isn’t something people should just be doing ad-hoc.
Of course it's the fucking UK, just recently watched a documentary about volunteers facing charges because they were tired of the city taking way too long to clean a river so he took matters into his own hands and got other people to help and now i'm reading about him here.
The UK is so shit, Clarkson showed how the farmers were constantly battling idiots to get anything done, hope he will be successful in getting rid of these environmental agency idiots.
Make it make sense 😢🤮
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.
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.
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
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.
It's in the fine article:
The EA’s main complaint seems to be that the dredging was significant enough that it constitutes a flood risk.
bwergh :)
Can't, since it doesn't 🤬
I want to speak to management, like NOW!
My God. How do we get off of this Merry-go-round?
Sir, this is a jet engine compressor blade... The way out is the combustion chamber.
Or we could fail and get hurled out through the nacelle?
Wow, this is a weird one. I thought for sure this was going to be someone being charged with mudlarking without a license (still outrageous but justifiable if they were also scooping up historical artifacts), but apparently it’s for creating a flood risk?? Brother, your flood protection shouldn’t be a mass of garbage. Someone make this charge make sense.
I'm gonna lean on another commenter who made me realise the legitimate reasoning behind something like this (disregarding the fact that two years is absurdly high): If we permit anyone to do whatever "cleaning" they themselves deem reasonable without approval, we risk that unknowledgable people with good intentions cause serious damage. One reason could be that they create an acute flood risk (you're right: garbage shouldn't be flood protection, but the actual flood protection is built around existing circumstances, and if removing the garbage causes a major risk to people losing their homes, the correct approach is to first prepare the flood protection, then remove the garbage). Another is that people can unknowingly or unintentionally destroy habitats or otherwise damage the environment.
The point is: We have some very competent people that are capable of assessing the impact of various cleaning operations. We need to let those people do their job. There can be very complex interactions in play, that turn your good intentions into catastrophic consequences. Therefore, we cannot allow laymen to judge how large cleaning operations should be conducted.
Full disclaimer: While I think the above reasoning is sound, I think we should be very careful regarding how unauthorised cleaning operations are punished. For example, it seems absurd to me to give jail time for it. When the person in question is obviously acting with good intentions, it's much more reasonable to sentence them to take some course where they can learn about why what they were doing was potentially harmful, and perhaps sentence them to community service working on some authorised project. That way, you help them learn, let them work on something they want to contribute to, and get more resources for the authorised projects.
Full disclaimer: While I think the above reasoning is sound, I think we should be very careful regarding how unauthorised cleaning operations are punished. For example, it seems absurd to me to give jail time for it. When the person in question is obviously acting with good intentions, it's much more reasonable to sentence them to take some course where they can learn about why what they were doing was potentially harmful, and perhaps sentence them to community service working on some authorised project. That way, you help them learn, let them work on something they want to contribute to, and get more resources for the authorised projects.
I feel like the punishment should depend on whether they did it competently or not. You should definitely get punished for screwing up even with good intentions, but if you actually are good enough to know what you're doing, you should get away with a relative slap on the wrist.
If people were doing this for clout/ad revenue or on a whim without trying to engage with the proper channels first I would agree, but it just isn’t reasonable to tell people to accept living in an environment full of garbage while their local government does nothing about it for literal years. If you walked along a river in your neighborhood with your pets and/or children how long would you accept seeing it choked with trash and sewage? Would you be okay with teaching them, through inaction, that this is fine? I’m not asking for you to answer, I just think all those things deserve as much consideration as ‘could this cause a flood if XYZ happens?’ Because of this has already caused a flood we clearly would have heard about it.
To me, this was a good faith effort made in the absence of any other resources. If this was load bearing garbage (!) then that needs to be communicated in their refusals/delays, along with a specific timeline for addressing it. That’s also assuming they have detected a real risk of significant flooding, which I’m skeptical of.
Powlesland and his team pulled 200 bags of garbage and organic debris out of a creek
Emphasis mine. I feel like that’s at the crux of the whole issue and the article doesn’t attempt to dig in.
What did they remove? I find it hard to believe that even the pettiest of bureaucrats would take issue with someone picking up actual trash.
It makes sense when you think of it less as a beurocrat taking issue with cleaning trash, and more like the ruling class making sure the poors don't get any ideas that the world can be better, since they might decide to hold them to doing something to help.
Organic debris is kinda vague, that could be twigs or a bakery's worth of white bread.
He took the shit out and now they are trying to bury him in it. Absolute wankers
Chip chip cheerio guvna, got a loicense for that?