Would you leave the banks of one of the ancient rivers of London looking like a rubbish dump? @EnvAgency would. When they sent investigation teams down to the Aldersbrook earlier this year to threaten local volunteers with two years in jail for restoring the river without permission, they didn’t even bother to look at the the piles of junk and hazardous materials (including oil and fuel) on the abandoned allotment plots next to the river. Even worse, when I asked them to remove the rubbish and restore the brook themselves (given local volunteers aren’t allowed to do it) they refused. So their plan is, apparently, to leave the river to die and to prosecute anyone who dares to try & restore the river. However, local river guardians are not waiting for permission to do what the authorities have failed to do. In the absence of the EA, the local authority or the landowner doing anything about the waste on the banks of the Aldersbrook, we’re going to start cleaning it, ready for the full restoration of this section of the brook later in the winter.