Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested

18th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

A dozen activists locked them­selves togeth­er through met­al pipes as 200 sup­port­ers ral­lied around them. The block­ade stopped work on the con­struc­tion site for six hours before a total of 27 peo­ple were arrest­ed.

This con­fronta­tion­al action was tak­en to pro­tect the Lox­a­hatch­ee Nation­al Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the pow­er plant site and to pro­tect the larg­er Ever­glades sys­tem. Restora­tion would be under­mined by new devel­op­ment that the pow­er plant is expect­ed to encour­age in the area. The civ­il dis­obe­di­ence action also aims to pro­tect the entire plan­et from the destruc­tive effects of cli­mate change caused by pow­er plant emis­sions.

“We just don’t need this plant,” said Lynne Purvis, an activist with Ever­glades Earth First! who was born and raised in the Lox­a­hatch­ee area. “I’m not will­ing to threat­en the integri­ty of the Lox­a­hatch­ee, one of the last large, intact pieces of north­ern Ever­glades, so that peo­ple can fuel their greedy ener­gy desires.”

Purvis says that the Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.
The protest was also attend­ed by grass­roots activists and group across the Unit­ed States who have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al Earth First! Win­ter Ren­dezvous. One such group, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, is part of an inter­na­tion­al move­ment for cli­mate jus­tice, which con­nects the social and envi­ron­men­tal issues relat­ed to the grow­ing
cli­mate cri­sis and calls for urgent and bold respons­es to the glob­al human-caused dilem­ma.

Bri­an Sloan, an orga­niz­er with Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca and par­tic­i­pant in Mon­day morning’s protest, said “FPL is doing what we call ‘green-wash­ing’. Gas-fired pow­er is not a clean or sus­tain­able ener­gy. It is a dirty and dwin­dling fos­sil fuel.” Sloan also states that Ris­ing Tide does not trust ener­gy com­pa­nies to solve the cli­mate cri­sis. “The solu­tions to cli­mate change will nev­er come from the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the prob­lem.”

Earth First! and the Ris­ing Tide move­ments rec­og­nize that the fight against fos­sil fuel pow­er is being used by the ener­gy indus­try to push a new wave of nuclear ener­gy. These grass­roots groups are com­mit­ted to extend­ing their fight against the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er with an eye on oth­er FPL pro­pos­als, such as Turkey Point and St. Lucie.

For info on local Earth First! efforts, vis­it: www.earthfirst2008oc.info

Con­tact: Ever­glades Earth First! (561) 588 — 9666
Pho­tos avail­able at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.

WE NEED YOUR HELP with bond mon­ey & legal fees for the 27 who were arrest­ed. We need to raise $10,000 to cov­er the bond fees. Please vis­it the Palm Beach Coun­ty envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion’s web­site to donate online or email us for how to send a check!