Paul Powlesland, an environmental lawyer, says he and a small group of volunteers pulled roughly 200 bags of waste out of the River Roding in east London, and that fish and dragonflies have since returned. The body that decided to act on this was the Environment Agency, and it is acting against the cleanup. [1]
The viral line is that he "faces up to 2 years in prison for doing it without a permit." That needs splitting into the true part and the inflated part. Confirmed: the Environment Agency has opened an investigation into the volunteer effort for restoring the river without a permit. The "up to two years" is the maximum penalty mentioned in coverage, not a charge, not a conviction, and not a sentence anyone has handed down. As of now Powlesland has not been prosecuted. [1]
What gives the story its sting is the comparison Powlesland draws himself. He says the agency spent decades ignoring what he calls rampant environmental crime on the Roding, then finally decided to move, not against Thames Water for allegedly dumping billions of litres of sewage in the river, nor against the waste criminals he says dumped thousands of tonnes of rubbish on its banks, but against him and a small volunteer charity for restoring a river without a permit. [2]
So how is cleaning a river a problem at all? The objection is procedural rather than environmental: work in and around an English watercourse can require authorisation, and the agency's case is that this cleanup wasn't authorised. Nobody is disputing that the rubbish is gone or that wildlife came back.
The post has traveled enormously. Mario Nawfal's version alone drew more than 500,000 views in days, and outlets including Dexerto picked it up. [3]
The Environment Agency has confirmed only that it is investigating. Whether that becomes an actual prosecution, let alone the headline prison sentence, is still unwritten.
Sources
- Tweet by @Dexerto — @Dexerto · community
- Tweet by @paulpowlesland — @paulpowlesland · community
- Tweet by @MarioNawfal — @MarioNawfal · community