Coston’s brook is a tributary of the river Brent, emerging above ground in Perivale Park from a twin-tunnel culvert. The culvert is protected by a metal grill, and over time rubbish in the brook gets trapped on the grill.
Yesterday, there was probably ~5 years worth of the stuff, impeding the flow of the brook. Enter CURB (Clean Up River Brent), who have clearly adopted the brook as one of their own. Two volunteers (thanks Ben!) laboured for about 2½ hours to liberate the rubbish, putting it in containers to bag up later. Well, one pink plastic (Audi!) car was too large to extract and we had to leave it – the mystery is how it got into the system in the first place.
You can watch a time-lapse movie of our labours below. The camera battery ran out before we finished, but it was all gone in the end – really.
Superb work, Henry and Ben! The last time the culvert grill was cleared was early 2020 amid the lockdown so only one volunteer was present. That volunteer was dramatically reminded of the lone-working injunction when he fell and cut his shin in the polluted water. I’m sure CURB members are far too sensible to do something like that!