Aug 10
The Government Threatened Him With Jail for Cleaning a Dead River — Look...
What does it take to make a dead river breathe again in London? Paul Powlesland found out — and nearly went to prison for the answer.
In February 2026, Paul waded into Alders Brook in chest waders, hired a thousand-pound excavator, and spent ten days pulling two hundred bags of rubbish from a stream that had been classified as essentially dead. Fish appeared within weeks. A moorhen nested. Then the Environment Agency — the same agency that had ignored four years of formal requests — opened a criminal investigation.
