⟡Michael-never-Mike⟡

River Roding in Parliament for the first time Yesterday I took a guest of honour into the Houses of Parliament for a historical first visit. I was able to smuggle this guest in my bag, but it’s arguably more important than any politician who currently works there. This guest was the River Roding. A bottle of Roding water was on the desk in front of me as I was given the chance by Ilford MP Jas Athwal to question Thames Water & the Environment Agency about illegal sewage dumping in the Roding for the first time ever. The facts are damning. Throughout last year I went out on the Roding in a pair of waders with a bucket & ammonia tester & discovered dozens of completely illegal outfalls spewing over a billion lites a year of raw sewage straight into the Roding. In the last 30 years, Thames Water has effectively stolen £10’s of millions of bill payers money that should have been spent on infrastructure upgrades on the Roding, gave the money to shareholders, & then spent almost nothing on the river, safe in the knowledge that no one was likely to call out the tide of illegal sewage that resulted. Up til now, they weren’t wrong: the Environment Agency has not brought a single prosecution for illegal sewage dumping on the Roding since the Agency was founded, despite thousands of crimes being committed. That cosy consensus had now ended. Before I questioned the EA & Thames Water, I made clear that I wasn’t there just on my own, or for the River Roding Trust, but representing the thousands of people who live the Roding & are determined that illegal sewage dumping will stop. I thought my asks to Thames Water were entirely reasonable in the circumstances: they must by the end of this year provide a detailed, costed plan of the specific physical steps they will take to end all illegal sewage dumps on the Roding by 2030. My ask to the EA was also reasonable: that they must prosecute all illegal sewage spills on the Roding to the full extent of the law, but that they could accept enforcement undertaking that the fines for each offence be spent on fixing the outfalls, rather than going to government. I’m sorry to say that neither Thames Water or the Environment Agency was able to say yes to either of these fair & reasonable demands. It therefore appears that Thames Water’s plan is to keep saying good sounding words, but to keep dumping sewage in the Roding for decades. The EA’s plan is to let them do this. The only thing standing between the Roding being killed with sewage pollution for decades to come is all of you. We don’t need ‘citizen scientists’ monitoring the decline of the river whilst justifying big river charity staff salaries to ‘engage’ people in a dying river. We need citizen investigators & campaigners: determined to find where the illegal sewage is coming from & then get it stopped by any (peaceful) means possible.

Victory for common sense (for now, at least)… It’s a relief that @EnvAgency have finally realised that prosecuting volunteers for cleaning & restoring a river (that they had left to rot) without permission was not a good look, so they have dropped their charges in favour of a ‘warning’. Thank you for all your support & encouragement, from across the country, the political spectrum & around the world. I’m certain that the comms disaster suffered by the EA over this was crucial in getting them to begin to see sense at last. This is, however, not the end of the story. The River Roding & its tributaries, like most rivers in the UK have still been abandoned & in parts left to die by the Environment Agency, with no plans to even put a stop to the serious environmental crimes taking place (like illegal sewage dumping), let alone to begin the process of restoration that the river so desperately needs. I am therefore seeking a meeting with the EA’s Chief Executive to ask (1) that the EA instead use its prosecuting powers for good, to demand a detailed plan from Thames Water to fix all illegal sewage discharges in years, not decades & (2) that the EA turns this whole saga into a good outcome by using the River Roding as a pilot scheme for how the EA can work with, rather than against, grassroots river guardians, to provide the protection & restoration our rivers so desperately need. I hope they will accept these very reasonable requests. But if not, I will continue to defy the EA, & will not be seeking their permission or authorisation to continue to care for & restore the river I love.

Good news! After decades of ignoring rampant environmental crime on the Roding, @EnvAgency has finally decided to act. Bad news! It’s not against Thames Water for illegally dumping billions of litres of sewage in the Roding, or the waste criminals who have dumped thousands of tonnes of rubbish on its banks, but against myself & a small volunteer charity for… restoring a river without a permit! Within a week of the magnificent work of River Roding Trust volunteers completing the arduous work of restoring 250 metres of the Aldersbrook this winter, EA investigators had been down to the site and rattled off a letter threatening us with prosecution for doing the work without a permit. This is despite the fact that the Trust have repeatedly asked the EA to do this vital work on the Aldersbrook themselves & they have refused. It is also despite the fact that they have not investigated the huge illegal sewage outlet on the Cranbrook a few hundred metres away, which illegally discharges 750,000,000 litres of raw sewage straight into the River Roding every year.