GUARDIANS OF THE RIVER

Dave Collins looks after the river for his local angling club in Wales. He is 75 now and retired from a research and development career in agrichemicals. He is a passionate fly fisher and became a river bailiff in 2015, just before the first pollution incident wiped out much of the life on the Afon Llynfi, a small river in Powys.

It took Collins and his angling colleagues four years to fix the damage from that first spill. Then another pollution event struck at the end of July 2020. This time the water levels were lower, the flow slower and the damage more severe – it was a ‘wipe out’ of life in the river. As yet, no one has been held responsible.