This is the worst “strong support” I’ve ever received. However, the malevolent uselessness of @EnvAgency is not…

This is the worst “strong support” I’ve ever received. However, the malevolent uselessness of @EnvAgency is not limited to the recent incident on the Aldersbrook. Over the last 10 years I have been battling, along with hundreds of dedicated local volunteers, to protect & restore the River Roding against all the odds. The Environment Agency has not lifted a finger to help in these actions & indeed has often been a blocker to our work on the river. Here’s some examples of the “strong support” we’ve received from the Environment Agency over the years… 🧵

Environment Agency@EnvAgency · Jun 18, 2026

@paulpowlesland We strongly support communities improving their local environment. It’s our responsibility to work with landowners to make sure activity doesn't cause unintended harm to the environment. We're investigating some unpermitted work on the River Roding but no decision has been made.

The River Roding is one of the worst rubbish polluted rivers in the country. Not only does it flow through many large urban centres, but the action of the tides sucks up rubbish from across the Thames Estuary & drops it on the Roding. In some places, the rubbish is so thick it completely covered river channels like the Aldersbrook. The authorities have not removed rubbish from the river in decades. When I asked the EA if they could remove the rubbish, they said it was “too dangerous” & also forbid volunteers from doing it as well, meaning we had to trespass, climb fences & scale ladders to remove the rubbish ourselves. Without any permission, funding or assistance from government, I have led volunteers out onto all parts of the lower river & together we have removed thousands of bags of rubbish. At least local councils helped us by taking the rubbish away, whereas the EA had done absolutely nothing, despite the fact most people would assume removing rubbish from rivers is one of its key duties.

The EA has allowed invasive species like Himalayan Balsam to spread out of control, with no plan whatsoever to even contain this damaging plant, let alone eliminate it from our river. Every year that the plant is allowed to spread, the problem gets worse & harder to solve, with the rare marshes along the river now at seriously damaged & risking destruction. Local volunteers have stepped up to act where they have failed, organising small groups on WhatsApp to take responsibility for different sections of the river & destroy as many of the plants as possible before they set seed. Over this last summer alone, there have been dozens of events, where volunteers have walked & waded along the river to laboriously remove these plants. The EA has offered us no support whatsoever in this massive & important task.

Last year there was a huge oil spill on the Roding. I first discovered the slick drifting past my boat & spent a day tracing it upstream to a tributary, where it was pooling behind an EA sluice. I rang it in to the EA hotline as a serious & urgent incident, but a day later they had done nothing (I later found out they had gone to the site, couldn’t see the massive slick of oil & didn’t bother to call me). With a massive rain storm threatening to wash the oil into the Roding, I decided to act. I fashioned a home made oil boom, got my wellies on & used a bucket to fill two 80 litre barrels with the thick engine oil. When the EA teams attended a day later, they told me off for entering the river & removing the oil & they took away the boom I made (as it was a “flood risk” apparently), causing the remaining oil to wash into the river. They never found the source of the oil, brought any prosecution or put anything in place to stop it happening again. In all they made things worse through their actions.

Paul Powlesland@paulpowlesland · Jan 26, 2025

On Thursday night I looked out of my boat & knew immediately that something was wrong on the River Roding. The moon was glimmering off the water in a strange way I hadn’t seen before. I went outside to discover an oil slick streaked across the river & the smell of engine oil in the air. Here’s what I did about it & what it says about regulatory failure & the role of river guardians 🧵

Illegal sewage outfalls are a major issue on the River Roding, as they are around much of the country. The EA has not brought any prosecutions for illegal sewage discharges on the Roding this century. In 2022, I discovered an illegal sewage outfall on the Aldersbrook discharging raw shit into the river. I reported it to the EA, who did absolutely nothing. I then had to campaign in my spare time for 3 years to get the outfall fixed, attending meetings with the council & Thames Water & dealing with journalists. Eventually, the campaign worked & Thames Water spent £1 million fixing the outfall. Subsequently, I realised that the EA had no idea where all the illegal sewage outfalls on the river were, or which were most harmful. I therefore went out on the river myself with a bucket, in a pair of waders to find & analyse all the illegal outfalls on the river. I found dozens of them, spilling over a billion litres of raw sewage illegally into the river every year. I have given the exact locations of all the illegal outfalls to the EA & they’ve done sweet FA. Raw sewage continues to pour into the river illegally & unchecked every minute of every day of the year, & parts of the river are now ecologically dead, as well as having e-coli levels more than 250 times the safe limit.

Perhaps the most serious invasive species of all is Japanese Knotweed. This plant is so invasive it can mean that land on which it grows often can’t be sold or mortgaged. It is very hard to get rid of (pretty much the only method that works is spraying it with glyphosate after the plant has flowered), & can only be done by professionals, not volunteers. Knotweed is spreading out of control on the Roding, with around 100 patches some of which are becoming forests of nothing but knotweed. It’s now threatening key infrastructure like railways & motorway embankments, as well as people’s homes. I can’t think of many tasks that should be a greater priority than controlling knotweed spreading along a river in a major city, but the EA has done nothing & has nor plans to do anything. So, in my spare time, I walked the river to find, photograph & geolocate every single knotweed patch. I then got funding to pay for removal & the amazing charity @ProtectEarthUK agreed to do the work at a discount rate. The first spraying took place last autumn & many of the largest patches are much reduced. It will probably take 5-10 years to eliminate all the knotweed, but unlike the EA I’m determined to do what needs to be done to ensure we remove this plant from my river.

It’s not just about stopping the worst destruction of the river, but also the way that the EA has no positive vision for the future of the river & its restoration. The Roding around Barking & Ilford used to have large areas of standing freshwater in marshes, ponds & ditches, but these have been almost entirely destroyed. To bring back the full range of habitats, & give local people a nice feature in an otherwise pond-less area, I raised donations from generous local people & set to work with a team of volunteers to build a pond in what had previously been a pile of rubbish & rubble beside the river. After a month, & at no cost to the taxpayer, we had built the biggest wildlife pond in the area. What was the reaction if the EA? You’ve guessed it; they threatened to prosecute us for building it without a permit & to demand that I destroy the pond so the area can be returned to a barren dumping ground.

A local resident has been in touch with this newspaper from *1990*, when I was four years old. Illegal sewage discharges on the Roding are not new, and it is a disgrace that the authorities have effectively been allowing them to happen for at least 40 years.