Last week we read about the recent jailing of the farmer who dug up a load of trees and straightened a length of bank of the River Lugg which ran across his land, supposedly to prevent flooding. This sentence shows just how seriously the courts are taking environmental damage.
I am not for one minute defending the man or his actions, but something smacks of double standards.
Back in the 1980s the Environment Agency – then known as the National Rivers Authority – was canalising long stretches of river, effectively doing exactly what this farmer has done.
More recently, following the floods of 2013/14, the EA dredged large stretches of the Rivers Tone and Parrett on the Somerset levels... further wide-scale habitat destruction in the name of flood defences, but this time sanctioned. There are many more recent cases I could muster too!
Along many of our rivers, the EA regularly clears trees and straightens banks to ‘move water away’ more quickly. However, according to the Rivers Restoration Centre, flood managers are now looking at holding water back, as opposed to moving it on quickly, in order to prevent flooding.
But let me ask this – will the EA be equally as quick to condemn the polluters to whom they are authorising permits to discharge toxic waste and sewage into our rivers? Will the courts jump on and punish these polluters with more than just fines, which are paid for by the public customer out of the utility companies’ ever-increasing profits anyway?
A precedent has been set now, with jail time for environmental criminals. Let’s hope the threat of that may be enough to seep into the heads of the sewage polluters. I’ll not hold my breath.
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