Rivers have a hard time in the city: hemmed in by retaining walls, buried in culverts, their bends straightened out – and that’s before they get used as sewers and general waste disposal sites. Bristol’s River Frome, which runs through Easton, is no exception here. After entering the inner city after Muller Road, it’s confined in a narrow, steel-walled trough beneath the elevated section of the M32, before entering the flood control scheme and a culvert down in Eastville. It re-emerges into daylight down at the M32 Parkway roundabout. The pictures below show what it looks like at this point.
Looks disgusting doesn’t it? Filthy water, dumped furniture; look a bit further and you’ll see escaped supermarket trolleys and further detritus of modern society.
Locals have repeatedly tried to get the City Council and the Environment Agency to do something about cleaning the Frome up, all to no avail. The only bit of tidying up that has taken place can be seen if one turns round and looks at the reinforced concrete mass of the roundabout and subway walls, where the following sight greets the observer.
Obviously, there’s money in the kitty for cosmetic projects, but none for real environmental work. These alleged public servants are clearly not up to the job. As stated by Thomas Ingoldby: “A servant is all to often a negligent elf”.
