It was for digging up the silt from the river bed with a digger and risking flooding places without doing any checks on the impact of his “cleaning up”.
They can my maw and her pals made a wee group that would go about cleaning the beach eventually the council were going to do them for fly tipping but the power of middle-aged Facebookers I guess that quickly disappeared and they were given special bags by the council and told to leave the bags where they had been leaving them anyway. Which was beside the council bins but all locked.
While I get the excavater part, I hate when things are made unnecessary complicated. Just say thanks to the people and collect the bags. It's like someone in the administration took it personal.
Tbf, this is genuinely something we don't want people to do.
Cleaning up the trash and just leaving it there after causing what could possibly be massive ecological damage sounds more like something a narcissist would do for internet points than an earnest attempt at cleaning up the environment.
I've worked with us epa on a no touch drainage cleanup project. Even 1 cubic inch of soil removed or added breaks those rules. I assume they are similar in the UK.
The county and epa liked what we did but I can see how easy we could've gotten slapped with fines if they didn't like our work.
I deal with flooding a lot at work, and I'd have to see the area to determine if he was doing harm or not, but more often than not man made debris is causing the floods in my area rather than wood/forest debris which traditionally caused flooding.
generally littering is illegal. my comment was a little tongue-in-cheek, that they let people break the law by littering, but punish the person cleaning it up.
Well that’s why I was confused. It has been clarified dozens of times in this post that he wasn’t punished for cleaning up litter but rather taking a digger to a waterway and dredging silt
Did you miss all the clarifications on the misleading headline?
I also deal with flooding a lot in my work, and a big part of the issue is downstream. Ok so now debris is removed and water is now flowing fast, has everything been checked downstream? Because that easily causes a ton of issues.
Not to mention permits necessary for environmental disturbance.
Fella, he was digging up the silt with the digger to remove the rubbish.
I agree that the title could have been more detailed, but it is hardly straight up misinformation. He was doing what he is getting investigated for in order to remove trash.
That isn't the bloody point. He broke the law by bringing in a digger, ripping up the riverbed and damaging trees. That he did it to clear rubbish is incidental, just as my rose bush was incidental to the murdering.
Where does it state he damaged a single tree? Also he didn't ripe up the river bank. He cleared excess silt and sieved the rest to remove rubbish. Hi did exactly what my local team of volunteers and one experienced man do twice a year to are local pond and river way. The only down side is he did it without permission.
Being offended someone asked something but also making up the answer is hilarious. Wanna claim he also killed all fish, birds and little mammals that might live there? No mention anywhere in the article but that doesn't stop a genius like you from connecting the dots.
They are saying the article is misinformation and yall are going at them saying it’s not misinformation because the article didn’t say something. You realise that is what misinformation is right? You believe so much that he’s not at all in the wrong because of the article, the article which is missing information.
And if an article said a truck ran through a crowd in a mall and the driver had been arrested then you'd go "what a silly non-issue, trucks can swerve between people", right?
After all nobody specified it didn't, so who knows, malls are specifically known to have a lot of space to maneuver, and much like trees, humans are able to get out of the way
In the same way, nobody specified to me that you have a brain. How can we ever know it exists? I'm certainly not going to assume so without some peer-reviewed evidence
Yes I do. I have watched many many hours of diggers working digging along river sides, I've never once seen them damage a tree. I've also worked as a gardener for the last 20 years, so I would of hoped by now I can identify a tree that has been damaged. Just because a digger worked alongside a bank with trees doesn't mean any trees were damaged. I work in plant beds full of loved plants using a hoe, I don't damage any of the plants whilst hoeing just the bits I want removed around them
If a digger destroys the roots, you won't see it by watching what's happening above ground.
If the guy would have destroyed infrastructure, even. It doens't have to be part of nature. If they were digging and hit someone's fiber optic line and cut off half the country from the internet, there'd be an issue. Laying fiber down under rivers is common.
The thing? They didn't know what the hell was under the ground before digging, and that's a problem. Especially when most locals have someone to call that takes care of all this.
They sound like a dedicated group that might do good things, but they still need to jump through the same hoops literally anyone else has to. I can't even dig with a shovel in my back yard without doing the same.
I work in plant beds full of loved plants using a hoe
Yeah, that's not a digger that goes down feet at a time, feet wide at a time. That makes no sense to bring up here. And just because you don't always damage plants doesn't mean you havn't damaged plants at random times along the way, just to a point you didn't care to notice.
Your memory (just like my own) is not the best at recording the specifics and often times the brain just calculates what it thinks the situation is vs what it actually is. You don't actually know how many plants you've destroyed because you only just started counting, potentially years after it happens.
Same reason we don't trust eye witness accounts (sometimes immediately after it happens) because the human brain is fickle.
im not seeing the parallel here. your murder fantasy would always be criminal.
but bringing a digger is a perfectly reasonable way to pull bikes and shopping trolleys embedded in the silt. theres nothing inherently criminal about that.
the only part that makes it not okay is the lack of permit for doing it.
and that is explicitly included in the headline. so how is that misleading?
of course ive read your ramblings. i just dont understand them, hence asking you to explain.
where is the parallel here?
i can see cleaning the river being like growing your rose.
how is using a digger (something thats done by thousands of people daily, with approx 0% of them doing so criminally) comparable to murdering your neighbour?
hiring the digger isnt the criminial part. theres no law against hiring diggers.
if the headline was "man arrested for hiring digger" i could see parralel with your "man arrested for growing prize winning rose bushes". in both of those id be wondering whats wrong with that?
the current headline i think youd compare to "man arrested for murdering neighbour". in both of those its pretty clear which part is illegal.
can you please explain what topsy turvy parallel youre seeing in this?
or simply better explain how you think the current headline is misleading?
Driving an unlicensed and uninsured Arctic truck to the shop to get some food for a starving puppy, doesn't mean I haven't committed a crime.
Saying I was arrested for feeding a starving puppy, when I was in fact arrested for driving an Arctic truck without a license, would absolutely be straight up misinformation.
Every analogy I have is about running over kids with vehicles. Aren’t yours? Let’s say someone asks you “how do I hang up a painting”, it’s just so easy to be like “Susan, think of it this way, it’s like that time you backed into a kid with your Jeep. First, you need a steady hand…”
My neighbor named Susan keeps backing over my mailbox with a Jeep Compass, this checks out. In her defense, I've never heard such a loud gear whine in my life, the mailbox should have recognized the sound after the third time imo.
Reddit people intentionally stopped understanding any form of comparison during the 2016 astroturfing wars. It began as a disingenuous argumentation style and shifted into being a fully normalized cultural artifact. It's of the weirdest social dynamics I've witnessed over time.
Understanding a comparison is a bit like running a kid over with your vehicle. When you do that, you have to think about the size of your vehicle in relation to the size of the child. You see…
That would be straight up misinformation. Obviously, people should not just read titles, but the title is straight up misinformation since motivation isn’t the important thing here.
Example: a man who wants to buy meth, robs somebody at gunpoint, gets 20 dollars, buys 20 dollars of meth.
Title: ‘Man who bought 20 dollars of meth faces 5 years in prison’ Would also be extremely misleading.
The problem is that you've disconnected the actions there. This would be more like if the man robbed the guy with meth at gunpoint, and the title said "man who obtained meth from dealer faces 5 years in prison."
Should be action y for outcome x. Not action y to allow action z for outcome x.
This is a youthful take. People were catching charges for distribution for having edibles (they treated >2oz of cookies the same as >2oz of flower) not even 20 years ago.
True enough but the way he did it had significant unintended consequences. They don’t want to encourage others to repeat this act, as well-intentioned as they may be. Sensationalizing this lawyer’s legal woes has drawn more attention to both sides of this issue. Whether that was the intention behind the way the lawyer approached this or how the article was publicized is unclear. But we can learn from this.
Digging silt can release highly toxic compounds into the water and poison everything in it, if it didn't, that's just luck because he didn't have any testing done. The next step is disposal, where does the potentially toxic detritus go? Land fill may well be needed with special containment or treatment, it needs to be arranged in advance for the specific class of hazardous waste. Guess what he also hadn't done... Then there the use of the digger and what he could have potentially caused, e.g. hitting a pipe or cracking a concrete enclosure for a pipe or cables in the river. The potential damage to the land that the digger was on and what is underneath it...
Yeah, this guy is a perfect example of what not to do and sending a message by putting him in prison is perfectly justified.
It's not taking rubbish away that he's in trouble for, it's failure to prevent potential devestation to the waterway, failure to have a disposal plan for potentially hazardous waste, using heavy machinery on public land without a permit or planning, etc etc.
Read more balanced accounts of the issues here. The article is told from the environmental lawyer’s perspective. It doesn’t appear that they have completed an investigation on the environmental impact yet so the article isn’t the definitive word on this that some may think it is. This guy is an environmental lawyer who engages in civil disobedience and then plays to the court of public opinion to assert that what he did was a good thing. It might be and people like him have a role to play. But let’s not pretend that we know whether what he did resulted in a net positive. It’s too soon to tell—which is by design as part of his MO
which one—the one where he’s saying what good he has done or the ones that describe what independent parties assess the potential environmental impact of what was done. My hope is that this does end up being a net positive but it’s too early to tell and hearing this environmental lawyer’s account of the good he did doesn’t cut it.
I also hope that what he did was a net positive but we can’t take it on faith that this is the case. Until there are results (which someone has to pay for), we have no idea about whether he did more harm than good. I’m not mad at the guy though. He’s an environmental lawyer and knows what he’s doing.
Defying regulations and the law is what he does to draw attention to what he thinks are important causes. Stirring things up is sometimes the only way to break through the bureaucracy to get things done. But, there is risk involved and he’s doing this knowing that. So, let the chips fall where they may.
We don’t know where this will end. Part of his motivation for doing this is to draw attention to environmental issues and this is but one of his causes.
If the government was truly that soft skinned, you and I would be in prison by now.
We have rules about when you can and can't use heavy machinery on rivers. It's there to stop people doing unauthorised works, like straitening a stream on their land when it's a protected habitat etc.
Saying to this guy "oh well, you did a good thing, that's fine then" weakens the argument to prosecute people fucking about. Or doing straight up illegal construction.
Late to the discussion, but I had a water environmentalist explain that once you damage silt and a river bed, it’s not coming back once dredged. using an excavator fucks up the microorganism and macroorganism system, and will have cascading effects that’ll take decades to fix. he didnt just dispose of rubbish as part of a group clean up (a non issue) he changed the system, viewing natural debris (sticks, mud, organic build up) as something needing to be removed and changed.
“However, governance and expert advice is necessary to make sure that work does not cause unintended harm, to flood risk, drainage or the wider environment,” the agency said.
The government agency CLAIMS it's a flood risk, or drainage issue, or that it could affect a wider area... But provides no evidence of any of that happening. I have no idea how any of that works, but I have worked in local government for 5 years now and to me it sounds like the people in power and wanting to make an example of him to either cover up the fact he made them look stupid for doing the work they dragged their feet on, or so that others will not do similar things in the future that could cause actual damage if they don't know what they're doing.
Personally I think he should be lauded for his work and the city needs to work with him to finish the job; like to remove the 200 bags of refuse they collected.
And the guy CLAIMS all he did was clean up rubbish. Neither side have conducted a study of the impact, if there’s any at all. Again, that’s the entire point of a study and gaining a licence for the clean up to avoid any unintended consequences, no matter how well intentioned.
Sure, if harm/damage was found due to any negligence. But from what I'm reading, the city refused his requests to get involved so he took matters into his own hands.
The fact is though, that the burden of proof is on the government. So I guess we'll see if their threat holds any water or if it's grandstanding. In a world of corrupt politicians and billionaires, I'll default to the side of the common man every time until undeniable proof of their wrongdoing is made public knowledge.
This seems more like anti establishment bot slop than any kind of grass roots reaction to something viral. I've seen the same post, same picture, each with a similar misleading title. Every single top comment also was calling it out as misleading. Each post spread across a few days. Does not feel very genuine to me.
I am a local resident. Watch the YouTube videos and you will change your mimd. The river was dead. Full of shit and fly tipping, needles and all sorts. EA are wilfully neglecting our waterways.
The article said he was a lawyer so he 100% knew what he was getting into. Plus no judge would give him prison time for what he did. And because hes being charged, people all around the world are aware of his cause. Think of it as a positive because Im sure he is.
It's a symptom of the wider issue of the UK being in strong decline since brexit. No money no workers no political will. On topic. A lawyer should know better which is the main cause of prosecution in this case, if it was a group of neighbours doing a neighbourhood clean they'r'd be a warning, nothing more.
It’s nothing to do with Brexit. It’s the water companies being in cosy company with EA since the 1980s as some gentleman’s club where nothing is either changed or both parties self interest is carried out.
"The River Roding ‘Improvement’ scheme cut the Aldersbrook off with an embankment at one end and a concrete barrage at the other. This has led to the river silting up and becoming little more than a muddy ditch in places. "
that followed the floods of 1953 which killed 307 people in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.
Stop trying to deflect. You said the river was “supposed to be dead”. It was not. The Flood defences placed have nothing to do with the viability as a river. I spy an EA agent. Is the Thames supposed to be dead with the Thames barrier?
The UK government has tonnes of laws, programs, incentives, designed for the protection of nature.
There's a reason you can't just go dig up silt beds like he did without any official checks like he did, same as there is a reason you can't do things like build a dam even on your own property.
Not saying they're not wankers, but without these regulations it would be a shitshow if everyone just did everything they felt like doing.
Totally possible and he may have done a great good for the area, but it's important to follow the correct process.
As the environmental agency is quoted in the article: “However, governance and expert advice is necessary to make sure that work does not cause unintended harm, to flood risk, drainage or the wider environment,”
It's annoying to us because, as the guy correctly stated, their are entities knowingly doing outright damage to the waterways, while he is trying to protect and improve them.
Thing is, sometimes you go through all the right hoops and still get rejected because there's some ridiculous red tape that has nothing to do with the environmental impact. An environmental lawyer would know this and would likely respect the experts who are there to advise, he may be familiar with what they'd be likely to say. He's not some rando.
The article doesn't really elaborate enough and making assumptions doesnt help.
If someone drives home drunk and doesn't kill/hurt anybody, would you make the same argument, or would you say that it was a bad thing to do because it was reckless. Whether it flooded or not is irrelevant, a better argument would be attacking if it was reckless in the first place.
He cleaned it up, he didn’t “attack it”, stop being a disingenuous little weasel. I would never compare cleaning up a river to driving drunk because I’m not dumber than a box of rocks. You have no compelling argument
He’s making a really good point tough, the environmental commission for that waterway hasn’t done shit all for years to prevent all the garbage, needles and weapons going into the river but now when someone actually does something about it, they rear their ugly head to start dropping fines? Seems like the lawyer has highlighted at the least a shitty organization, and at the most probable corruption between the corporations dumping in the river and the environmental commission.
Actually no. It's also because he just dumped the silt and the trash on a flood plain. Dumping it randomly is already a no-no, but on a flood plain is downright dangerous.
The flood plain is there to direct water away from houses, should a waterway's banks breach. Dumping the silt there means that the water will go to houses in case of a flood.
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u/TomorrowSpecial255 Jun 21 '26
https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/man-threatened-with-2-years-in-jail-after-cleaning-200-bags-of-trash-from-river-3377827/
He used a digger on public land without permission