I feel like this is only justifiable if the officials aren’t given time to act. It would be one thing if he fired off an email and ran out and did this the next day, but according to the article he spent years contacting officials before doing it himself. If they want to live by perfect world rules where stuff like this is overseen and coordinated with experts then they need to do it in a timely manner. It’s unreasonable to expect people to live in an area full of garbage for years and just do nothing about it.

Just make sure to up armour it if you do.

if they didnt want the hazmat to be a hazard they shouldn’t let it into the river; this way people won’t have to risk lives to clean it up. from this firefighters pov - i can understand how dangerous it is to work around rivers but imho i am happy to hope the damages to a person voluntarily working to clean up an organization’s messes will, after trial, be paid by the said org.

i know that’s not gonna happen. i just.. it fucking sucks this fucking country.

This is sad, but also understandable.

I totally agree that the punishment is unnecessarily harsh, but well meaning people can cause damage while trying to do good. The road to hell and all that.

Those responsible for maintaining the area not doing their job is a separate, and I'd say more serious, matter.

Yeah you need to run an environmental impact study and a 6 month observational survey to determine the long term impacts of removing pollution from the environment.

Your councilman is trash. I don't want to encourage bulldozing a neighborhood but you're right to feel that way. Then again, I do encourage making places walkable so you'd get critical support from me. Just get utilities marked so you don't hit a gas line.