Christ. What a quote. And how depressing it all is. The poor family...
> Eels are pretty hardy, says Alistair; they can even travel over land if they need to. To see them gasping and dying on the banks was heartbreaking. “It was apocalyptic.”
> The results found unusually high levels of heavy metals, ammonia levels that were “well outside acceptable limits for any freshwater life” and nitrogen levels that were “toxic to all aquatic life”.
It's quite a long article that deals with many problems the UK has regarding environmental protection, illegal waste dumping and so on. The lack of care and amount of damage is just shocking.
If you're familiar with aquatic biology and chemistry, the levels of ammonia and nitrogen required to cause harm to fish like this is staggering. These animals have evolved (in many cases, not all) to tolerate some pretty gross conditions. Killing fish this acutely takes incredibly poor conditions. Especially carp.
In Italy this sort of thing is usually run by and/or blamed on the mafia. It's scary to think that the UK can do this to itself without needing the mafia involved.
What’s the proportion of local crime syndicates having local roots vs Eastern European roots? Is it even or is it lopsided? I really don’t know but have them impression it’s anglos but also lots from other parts of Europe.
Organized crime just organizes the dumping operations. It happens in the US too. It's just lazy and easier to toss stuff on the side of the road knowing full well there's slim to zero chances of you ever getting dinged for it. It is less so major companies doing this these days (they did in the past) but more smaller outfits now you have to worry about who don't want to pay associated fees for proper disposal of environmental hazards. Always random piles of tires and construction crap to be found in certain areas. But even something so innocuous as your neighbor changing motor oil and just pitching it in the trash after is technically against the rules.
There are those in the U.K. who are not beyond equating Thatcherism and the Mafia. It has had long-ranging effects like this for almost 4 decades. The Thatcher government was not truly a criminal gang, of course.
The water companies were privatized under Thatcher, for those missing the context.
Note that the waste dumping problems are not all caused by water privatization, either. But as with the comparison to criminals, that's often conflated when people talk about it.
By people in this country whenever river pollution comes up. It's very popular to blame the water companies for everything, and a common remark on something that is widely discussed. Count Binface's manifesto in the recent Clacton by-election, for example, had a point where the water company executives should be forced to swim in the rivers that they had polluted.
The reality is that it's not solely the water companies, even though if you put it to them many people would leap on the comparison to the Mafia.
You should read TFA. Among it's many unambiguous claims is that the root cause was extensive dumping at Morgans Farm by Robins of Herstmonceux, and that fixing it could be model for how to fix similar problems throughout Britain.
An unhedged claim can't be quoted because there isn't one, but nobody claimed otherwise. Absolutist claims are, of course, an unrealistic bar for journalism. It's unclear why you are writing ominously/non-colloquially. I'm guessing you have some kind of unstated bias here, and are falling into the internet trope of speaking as though something doesn't even exist unless it is proven in a court of law or via formal math or something.
What on earth are you even referring to? Everything written in the article seems relevant. Isn't the claim that this entire lake was killed due to negligent pollution from an upstream farm, and is one of many cases? Isn't the conclusion that these cases are caused by a lack of regulation/enforcement?
> Eels are pretty hardy, says Alistair; they can even travel over land if they need to. To see them gasping and dying on the banks was heartbreaking. “It was apocalyptic.”
> The results found unusually high levels of heavy metals, ammonia levels that were “well outside acceptable limits for any freshwater life” and nitrogen levels that were “toxic to all aquatic life”.
It's quite a long article that deals with many problems the UK has regarding environmental protection, illegal waste dumping and so on. The lack of care and amount of damage is just shocking.
I really recommend a read.