Category: Action Reports

The Clause 21 Growth and Infrastructure Bill Threat: More Info

 

THE LOOSE ANTI OPENCAST NETWORK

IF THE GOVERNMENT GETS ITS WAY, ARE WE LIKELY TO SEE MORE ‘MOTHBALLED’ OPENCAST SITES POCK-MARKING OUR COUNTRYSIDE?

 

THE LOOSE ANTI OPENCAST NETWORK

IF THE GOVERNMENT GETS ITS WAY, ARE WE LIKELY TO SEE MORE ‘MOTHBALLED’ OPENCAST SITES POCK-MARKING OUR COUNTRYSIDE?

LAON PR 2012- 16                                                               1/12/12

The hid­den top­ic so far, in all the dis­cus­sion about the Ener­gy Bill is what will be its impact on the UK Coal Indus­try. This is a much shrunk­en indus­try, pro­duc­ing around 18m tonnes of coal a year. Last year 59% of that coal was pro­duced by open­cast meth­ods. This year, as the deep min­ing sec­tor con­tin­ues to suf­fer from prob­lems and cost pres­sures are clos­ing mines (on a tem­po­rary basis) at Malt­by and Aper­perg­wm and Daw Mill, our largest pit is almost cer­tain to close, domes­tic coal pro­duc­tion is becom­ing ever more reliant on sur­face min­ing – in the July to Sep­tem­ber quar­ter, of the 4m tonnes of coal the UK pro­duced, 65% now came from sur­face mines.

But even the sur­face mine sec­tor of the coal indus­try is not immune to the cold winds of eco­nom­ic real­ism com­ing from across the Atlantic, as US coal pro­duc­ers, des­per­ate to find a mar­ket for their coal now that it can no longer com­pete with gas in the US domes­tic mar­ket because of the ‘frack­ing rev­o­lu­tion’, send shiploads of coal to Europe at prices that make UK coal pro­duc­tion uncom­pet­i­tive. As a con­se­quence, ATH Resources, a major sur­face mine oper­a­tor has put itself up for sale and stopped devel­op­ment work on its new sites and Scot­tish Coal has asked its work­force to take a 10% pay cut and moth­balled its large Blair House open­cast site in Scot­land inde­fin­ably. It’s just left it as large hole.

Fur­ther­more, the Ener­gy Bill, intro­duced into Par­lia­ment this week is intend­ing to cre­ate a low car­bon gen­er­at­ing sys­tem which is design to squeeze out coal from being part of the fuel mix unless Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age (CCS) prove itself to be com­mer­cial­ly viable. The Bill will pro­vide for finan­cial dis­in­cen­tives to make it more cost­ly to burn coal in pow­er sta­tions with­out CCS, whilst, at the same time, pro­vide finan­cial incen­tives for exist­ing coal fired pow­er sta­tions to be ful­ly con­vert­ed to burn bio­mass. The result is that Coal Oper­a­tors in the UK are for the fore­see­able future like­ly to see their mar­ket for coal shrink­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

All that may sound good to you, if you wor­ry about pro­tect­ing the coun­try­side from being treat­ed as one large coal bunker, or you are con­cerned about cli­mate change.

Except it is not all good news. The expect­ed decline in the use of coal for pow­er gen­er­a­tion pur­pos­es is going to take years to achieve. In the mean­time, we may be start­ing to wit­ness an increase in plan­ning appli­ca­tions for new open­cast mines across the UK, as Coal Oper­a­tors realise that they must try to cash in on the invest­ments they have already made before the coal mar­ket dries up.

This month LAON can report, in its 7th Review of Open­cast Sites avail­able here:

https://nottingham.indymedia.org/articles/3309

 that two new pro­pos­als have been made recent­ly, one for a new 10m tonne site called Cauld­hall, near Rosewell in Mid­loth­i­an (iron­i­cal­ly by Scot­tish Coal) and the oth­er at the Dean­field site for 1.18m tonnes at Sharleston near Wake­field, where UK Coal, anoth­er coal com­pa­ny which near­ly went into admin­is­tra­tion this year, intends to sur­face mine. As a con­se­quence, The Stop Open­cast in Sharl­ston (SOS) group has joined the Net­work

That is not the only bad news about the sur­face min­ing of coal in Eng­land. The Gov­ern­ment is propos­ing, through the Growth and Infra­struc­ture Bill (Clause 21), to make it eas­i­er to dig up coal in Eng­land, just when they are plan­ning to reduce the role coal plays in pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty through the Ener­gy Bill. This clause of the Bill is like­ly to be debat­ed by the Growth and Infra­struc­ture Pub­lic Bill Com­mit­tee, along with our evi­dence, on Tues­day 4th Decem­ber.

LAON’s con­cern about these pol­i­cy changes is this. Giv­en the eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties that the UK Coal Indus­try finds itself in, is this the right time to be chang­ing the plan­ning sys­tem to make it eas­i­er for Coal Oper­a­tors to get per­mis­sion for new open­cast mines? This is increas­ing the risk that many more open­cast sites are left ‘moth­balled’ and pock-mark­ing our coun­try-side if UK Coal Pro­duc­ers find that they are increas­ing­ly priced out of their own declin­ing domes­tic mar­ket. In our view, this is not the time to relax plan­ning con­trols at all for new sur­face mines in Eng­land

We are hop­ing that the Gov­ern­ment realis­es the incon­sis­ten­cies in its cur­rent pol­i­cy pro­pos­als and whilst it con­tin­ues with its plans to decar­bonise the gen­er­at­ing sec­tor, it revis­es its plans and not allow any plans to sur­face mine coal in Eng­land to be treat­ed as a Major Infra­struc­ture Project.

A ref­er­enced ver­sion of this press release is avail­able by con­tact­ing LAON at the email address below.

About LAON

The Loose Anti-Open­cast Net­work (LAON) has been in exis­tence since 2009. It func­tions as a medi­um through which to oppose open cast mine appli­ca­tions. At present LAON links indi­vid­u­als and groups in N Ire­land (Just Say No to Lig­nite), Scot­land (Coal Action Scot­land), Wales (Green Val­leys Alliance, The Merthyr Tyd­fil Anti Open­cast Cam­paign), Eng­land, (Coal Action Net­work), Northum­ber­land, (Whit­ton­stall Action Group, Hal­ton Lea Gate Res­i­dents)) Co Durham (Pont Val­ley Net­work), Leeds, Sheffield (Cow­ley Res­i­dents Action Group), Kirklees, (Skel­mansthor­pe Action Group)  Not­ting­hamshire (Short­wood Farm Open­cast Oppo­si­tion), Der­byshire (West Hal­lum Envi­ron­ment Group, Smal­l­ey Action Group and Hill­top Action Group) , Leices­ter­shire (Minor­ca Open­cast Protest Group), Wake­field (Stop Open­cast in Sharl­ston) and Wal­sall (Alumwell Action Group).

Con­tact­ing LAON

Steve Leary LAON’Ss Co-ordi­na­tor, at infoatlaon@yahoo.com

You can now fol­low LAON on Twit­ter @ http://twitter.com/Seftonchase

Fracking Lord’s Chelsea Mansion Drilled

The Big Rig Revolt kicked off at 8am Sat­ur­day with Frack Off Lon­don pay­ing a sur­prise vis­it to the Chelsea Man­sion owned by Lord Browne of River­stone and Cuadrilla. The Frack­ing Lord’s malign influ­ence has spread through­out the gov­ern­ment since he was appoint­ed to the role of recuit­ing busi­ness lead­ers to advise gov­ern­ment depart­ments. A vari­ety of oth­er actions are planned across the coun­try through­out the day.

Uncon­ven­tion­al gas, includ­ing Shale Gas, Coal Bed Methane (CBM) and Under­ground Coal Gasi­fi­ca­tion (UCG), are threat­en­ing to spread thou­sands of wells across the British Isles. The first appli­ca­tion for an uncon­ven­tion­al gas devel­op­ment in Britain, 14 sites with 22 wells and over 20km of pipelines, was sub­mit­ted to Falkirk Coun­cil by Dart Ener­gy. Most areas off the coun­try face some sort of threat and the cli­mate impli­ca­tions of these process­es are fright­en­ing.

Dressed in orange boil­er suits and wear­ing gas masks 6 cam­paign­ers from Frack Off Lon­don erect­ed a 20ft drilling rig out­side the home of Lord Browne to high­light the peer’s involve­ment in UK uncon­ven­tion­al gas devel­op­ment. The gov­ern­ment has just announced that they are end­ing their gentleman’s agree­ment with Cuadrilla to sus­pend frack­ing oper­a­tions in Lan­cashire and it could start again in Lan­cashire with­in months.

The gov­ern­ment has plans to sell off large parts of the coun­try next year for uncon­ven­tion­al gas exploita­tion. The Chan­cel­lor, George Osborne, is also expect­ed to announce the set­ting up of an Office of Shale Gas to expidite the process of frack­ing the coun­try. The gov­ern­ment is also plot­ting to short cir­cuit local plan­ning pro­cee­dures and green-light appli­ca­tions direct­ly from cen­tral gov­ern­ment, ensur­ing local com­mu­ni­ties have no chance to object.

Dozens Wounded in Mayanmar Coppermine Protest

Secu­ri­ty forces used water can­nons, tear gas and smoke bombs to clear pro­test­ers from a cop­per mine in north­west­ern Myan­mar, wound­ing vil­lagers and Bud­dhist monks in the biggest use of force against demon­stra­tors since the reformist gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Thein Sein took office last year.

Secu­ri­ty forces used water can­nons, tear gas and smoke bombs to clear pro­test­ers from a cop­per mine in north­west­ern Myan­mar, wound­ing vil­lagers and Bud­dhist monks in the biggest use of force against demon­stra­tors since the reformist gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Thein Sein took office last year.

Monks and oth­er pro­test­ers had seri­ous burns after the crack­down at the Let­padaung mine near the town of Mony­wa. Pro­test­ers who oppose the mine’s impact on vil­lagers and the envi­ron­ment had occu­pied the area for 11 days.

The police action risks becom­ing a pub­lic rela­tions and polit­i­cal fias­co for Thein Sein’s gov­ern­ment, which has been tout­ing its tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy after almost five decades of repres­sive mil­i­tary rule.

Pho­tos of the wound­ed monks showed they had sus­tained seri­ous burns on parts of their bod­ies. It was unclear what sort of weapon caused them, or whether the burns were caused by their shel­ters catch­ing fire from what­ev­er devices police used.

Activists interfere with international mining conference in Finland

“There is no such thing as socially and environmentally sustainable mining!”

Today in Espoo, Fin­land, a meet­ing of bureau­crats and indus­tri­al­ists  enti­tled Confe

“There is no such thing as socially and environmentally sustainable mining!”

Today in Espoo, Fin­land, a meet­ing of bureau­crats and indus­tri­al­ists  enti­tled Con­fer­ence on Social­ly and Envi­ron­men­tal­ly Respon­si­ble Min­ing was dis­rupt­ed by the group Hyökyaal­to (“Tidal wave). The fol­low­ing state­ment was released today:

With the North­ern min­ing boom the min­ing indus­try, famous for it’s chem­i­cal emis­sions, is threat­en­ing waters and ecosys­tems in var­i­ous loca­tions, where clean nature offers the most pos­si­bil­i­ties for local peo­ple. It is grotesque that the peo­ple involved gath­er to dis­cuss the min­ing indus­try as a sus­tain­able activ­i­ty while every emer­gency dam in the Tal­vi­vaara mine is leak­ing poi­so­nous waste into Vuok­si waters.

The action is a protest against the indus­try and the state’s attempt to legit­imize min­ing by dis­cussing its “sus­tain­abil­i­ty”. Pro­test­ers are remind­ing peo­ple that no such thing as “respon­si­ble”, “sus­tain­able” or “green” min­ing exists. The Tal­vi­vaara mine in Sotkamo, East­ern Fin­land is a clear exam­ple that the only green things caused by min­ing are the pol­lut­ed swamps and waters. The min­ing indus­try, famous for its chem­i­cal emis­sions, threat­ens the waters and oth­er ecosys­tems cru­cial to every­one liv­ing in the sur­round­ing areas. The action is arranged in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Stop Tal­vi­vaara move­ment and all the peo­ple to whom min­ing indus­try caus­es suf­fer­ing around the world.

The envi­ron­men­tal activists feel that direct action is the only strat­e­gy left to make a dif­fer­ence since the Finnish gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to sup­port min­ing and ignore the crit­i­cal voic­es from the peo­ple com­plete­ly. Thus, the pub­lic opin­ion has no impact in the par­la­men­tary sys­tem. A reveal­ing exam­ple of this is that the open­ing speak­er for the two-day green­wash­ing con­fer­ence is Hei­di Hau­ta­la from the Finnish Green par­ty.

The organ­is­ing group of this protest, Hyökyaal­to demands imme­di­ate shut­down of Tal­vi­vaara mine and aban­don­ing all oth­er min­ing plans.

www.hyokyaalto.org

Stop the mining boom!

Activists Lock Themselves to Trucks Outside Valero’s Houston Refinery

Activists Begin Sustained Hunger Strike, Demand That Valero Divest from Keystone XL Pipeline

HOUSTON, TX – THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 8:00AM –

Activists Begin Sustained Hunger Strike, Demand That Valero Divest from Keystone XL Pipeline

HOUSTON, TX – THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 8:00AM –-Long­time Gulf Coast activists Diane Wil­son and Bob Lind­sey Jr. have locked their necks to oil tanker trucks des­tined for Valero’s Hous­ton Refin­ery in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Tar Sands Blockade’s protests of TransCanada’s Key­stone XL pipeline. Valero Ener­gy Corp. is among the largest investors in TransCanada’s tox­ic tar sands pipeline that will ter­mi­nate near the com­mu­ni­ty of Man­ches­ter, locat­ed in the shad­ow of Valero’s refin­ery. Not only are Wil­son and Lind­sey blockad­ing the Valero refin­ery, the two life­long friends have also vowed to begin a sus­tained hunger strike demand­ing that Valero divest from Key­stone XL and invest that mon­ey into the health and well-being of the peo­ple of Man­ches­ter.

With a 90% Lati­no pop­u­la­tion, Manchester’s rela­tion­ship with the Valero refin­ery is a text­book case of envi­ron­men­tal racism. Res­i­dents there have suf­fered through decades of pre­ma­ture deaths, can­cers, asth­ma and oth­er dis­eases attrib­ut­able to the refin­ery emis­sions. With lit­tle finan­cial sup­port for law­suits and with­out the polit­i­cal agency nec­es­sary to leg­isla­tive­ly reign-in crim­i­nal pol­luters like Valero, the com­mu­ni­ty suf­fers while Valero posts record prof­its.

“All my life the Gulf Coast has been an envi­ron­men­tal sac­ri­fice zone, and enough is enough,” declared Diane Wil­son, who spent over twen­ty years orga­niz­ing to stop chem­i­cal plants from dump­ing tox­ins direct­ly into Gulf waters. “Key­stone XL will bring to dirt­i­est fuel on the plan­et right down to the Gulf, where already over­bur­dened com­mu­ni­ties like Man­ches­ter will be forced to suf­fer even more. After decades of tox­ic air in Man­ches­ter, I refuse to just let them con­tin­ue to pun­ish this com­mu­ni­ty. I won’t eat until Valero divests from Key­stone XL.”

Wil­son, a fourth-gen­er­a­tion Gulf Coast shrimper, is no stranger to civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. After years of fight­ing indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion in her home­town of Sead­rift, TX, her will­ing­ness to use civ­il dis­obe­di­ence in the strug­gle for clean water and the suc­cess­es it wrought for her com­mu­ni­ty changed the land­scape of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice along the Gulf Coast.

New­ly des­ig­nat­ed by the Water­keep­er Alliance as the San Anto­nio Bay Water­keep­er, Bob Lind­sey Jr. was born and raised in Cal­houn Coun­ty, which has high­est rate of can­cer of any coun­ty in TX. Lind­sey also has a shrimp­ing her­itage stretch­ing back five gen­er­a­tions. His sis­ter has had four episodes of can­cer, and his father and nephew both died of rare dis­or­ders while in their for­ties. All of these dis­eases are trace­able to the chem­i­cal facil­i­ties around which Bob’s fam­i­ly mem­bers lived and worked.

“Me? I’m healthy. They’re the ones I’m fight­ing for. We have to be pre­pared to fight for those who can’t fight for them­selves or who are too afraid to fight for them­selves. That’s why I’m here.”

“Diane and Bob’s deci­sion to hunger strike in protest of TransCanada’s Key­stone XL and chal­lenge Valero’s long­stand­ing dis­re­gard for the health and safe­ty of the peo­ple of Man­ches­ter push­es the bound­aries of the Gulf Coast envi­ron­men­tal move­ment yet again, explains Ram­sey Sprague, a Louisiana Gulf Coast-born Tar Sands Block­ade spokesper­son. “Man­ches­ter deserves jus­tice as do all com­mu­ni­ties treat­ed as ener­gy sac­ri­fice zones. Cor­po­ra­tions like Valero and Tran­sCana­da can­not seem to func­tion with­out vio­lat­ing the health and safe­ty of the peo­ple every­where from Alber­ta to Man­ches­ter.”

Mapuche Indians Fight New Airport in Southern Chile

“This is a project that reflects the occupation…of Mapuche ter­ri­to­ry,” said Iván Reyes, an indige­nous leader staunch­ly opposed to the con­struc­tion of an inter­na­tion­al air­port in the south­ern Chilean region of Arau­canía.

Reyes, an agri­cul­tur­al tech­ni­cian, said the con­struc­tion project was approved thanks to an envi­ron­men­tal impact study “based on lies” that was car­ried out by Arcadis Geot­éc­ni­ca, the Chilean sub­sidiary of a Nether­lands-based inter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing and engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny.

The study “says there will be no impact on com­mu­ni­ties in the area. But in a lat­er analy­sis, we detect­ed that the base line and mea­sure­ments had been manip­u­lat­ed,” he said.

The new air­port, whose con­struc­tion was actu­al­ly approved in 2005, is now one of the most high-pro­file projects of the right-wing gov­ern­ment of Sebastián Piñera. It is being built in Quepe, 20 km from the city of Temu­co and near­ly 700 km south of San­ti­a­go.

The La Arau­canía New Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, which will replace the Maque­hue Air­port, will have a 2,440-metre run­way and a 5,000-square-metre pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal.

Temu­co, which is halfway between the Pacif­ic Ocean and the Andes foothills, is in the mid­dle of prairies, pas­ture and farm­land, and forests.

Although a few Mapuche com­mu­ni­ties sup­port the new air­port, which they see as a step for­ward for the region in terms of eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al devel­op­ment, many oth­ers are staunch­ly opposed, argu­ing that it will under­mine bio­di­ver­si­ty and the envi­ron­ment, and will destroy their ances­tral ter­ri­to­ry.

The Mapuche, Chile’s largest indige­nous group, num­ber near­ly one mil­lion in this coun­try of over 16 mil­lion peo­ple, and the strug­gle for their ances­tral land in the south of the coun­try has fre­quent­ly pit­ted them against large land­hold­ers, log­ging com­pa­nies and oth­er pri­vate inter­ests.

At the age of 23, Tranamil is already a Mapuche leader, in charge of the reli­gious life of his com­mu­ni­ty, Rofue. He is tena­cious­ly opposed to the con­struc­tion of the air­port, which he describes as “a gate­way to invade Mapuche ter­ri­to­ry.”

Tranamil, or “machi Fidel” as he is known by the local com­mu­ni­ty, is one of the most active indige­nous lead­ers in the area. He has been arrest­ed sev­er­al times, and his home is fre­quent­ly searched by the police. Since 2005, his moth­er has been liv­ing with sev­en pel­lets in her right knee, after a harsh police crack­down on a protest.

The house where Tranamil and his moth­er live is warm and qui­et. They raise pigs and chick­ens, and have a small veg­etable gar­den.

“But soon, air­lin­ers will be land­ing every minute. That will not only vio­late our spir­i­tu­al life but also our cul­ture and har­mo­ny,” he said.

He also said that to build the air­port, “between 200 and 300 hectares of native (old-growth) for­est will be cut down, and lost for­ev­er. It would take 400 years for the trees to grow back to their cur­rent height.”

Evictions and Destruction on the ZAD Airport Protest Site

The ZAD air­port protest site in France is still being evict­ed, a process that start­ed on the 16th Octo­ber. The zone is grad­u­al­ly being mil­i­tarised but there are HUGE num­bers of pro­test­ers and seem­ing­ly more every day. We’re still fight­ing and it is not over!

 

The ZAD air­port protest site in France is still being evict­ed, a process that start­ed on the 16th Octo­ber. The zone is grad­u­al­ly being mil­i­tarised but there are HUGE num­bers of pro­test­ers and seem­ing­ly more every day. We’re still fight­ing and it is not over!

 

The ZAD is an air­port protest site in the west of France about 15 miles north of Nantes. The air­port project was first pro­posed over forty years ago and has faced con­stant local resis­tance ever since. The project is in the hands of the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Vin­ci, who also pro­vide us with such « ser­vices » as pris­ons, motor­ways and nuclear pow­er sta­tions. It is the par­tic­u­lar pet project of Jean Marc Ayrault, the for­mer may­or of Nantes and cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter of France. In 2009 the area host­ed a cli­mate camp, since when the emp­ty hous­es, fields and forests have been grad­u­al­ly fill­ing up with peo­ple dis­gust­ed enough by the idea of this project to stay and resist. The rea­sons for stay­ing are as diverse as the peo­ple but the occu­piers are unit­ed by an idea that fight­ing cap­i­tal­ism is an impor­tant part of every day life.

Until the sec­ond week of Octo­ber you could still arrive on the ZAD and tour around over 30 diverse squats spread across the two thou­sand hectares of threat­ened land. The peo­ple unit­ed there to organ­ise togeth­er and fight the air­port project but life was far from unpleas­ant. You could vis­it the beau­ti­ful straw bale house bak­ery which pro­vid­ed the whole area with free price deli­cious organ­ic bread twice a week, the numer­ous col­lec­tive gar­dens, the home made wind tur­bine to pro­vide elec­tric­i­ty, an incred­i­ble range of cab­ins on the ground and in the trees made from col­lect­ed mate­ri­als, and you prob­a­bly would have been able to go to a con­cert, join us on an action, help us organ­ise and come to a few work­shops to learn to climb, or knit, or maybe build a rock­et stove.

Right at the moment though we don’t seem to be leav­ing our­selves much time for knit­ting work­shops. On Tues­day 16th Octo­ber the large scale evic­tions of the place we call home start­ed, and they weren’t mess­ing around. Riot vans arrived en masse from six in the morn­ing and had already evict­ed sev­en squat­ted hous­es and burned down a large cab­in by ten o’clock in the
morn­ing. Approx­i­mate­ly 1200 police were mobi­lized for this so-called ‘oper­a­tion Cesar’, pro­tect­ing the work­ers who use plain white vans, hid­ing their com­pa­ny names. Since then we have seen near­ly all of those hous­es razed to the ground, and most of the oth­er hous­es, cab­ins and homes evict­ed and destroyed. We have also near­ly all inhaled a deeply unhealthy amount of tear gas and seen enough blue vans and uni­forms to last a life­time.

Novem­ber 17th marked a huge change in this strug­gle. Some­where between 20,000 and 40,000 (depend­ing who you ask) peo­ple were unit­ed togeth­er on the ZAD for the huge Reoc­cu­pa­tion Demo. This involved a march from the near­by town of Notre Dame des Lan­des (where the demo stretched for near­ly eight kilo­me­tres) and a chest­nut plan­ta­tion close to the cen­tre of the ZAD where huge num­bers of peo­ple got to work build­ing new cab­ins. All day it was hard to move with­out get­ting in the way of peo­ple ham­mer­ing, saw­ing and car­ry­ing heavy things into the for­est. Wit­ness­ing this col­lec­tive ener­gy, and around ten large cab­ins fly up in the course of an after­noon is some­thing I feel sure no one who was there will for­get. More than that, I hope that every sin­gle per­son who squelched through the mud that day now feels a part of the ZAD, and that we will not lose this col­lec­tive force and feel­ing of strength.

Since then there has been vast amounts of con­struc­tion hap­pen­ing all over the ZAD. In fact it is hard to find a place on the zone where you can’t hear ham­mer­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the last few days this has been accom­pa­nied by the all-too-famil­iar sounds of con­cus­sion grenades and tear gas bombs. All of the new­ly con­struct­ed tree hous­es and the ground-lev­el cab­in in the Rohanne For­est were once again destroyed on Sat­ur­day in a con­stant cloud of tear gas. Despite being attacked and gassed all day, the huge num­ber of sup­port­ers on the ground stayed until long after dark, until the police final­ly crawled back to where they came from. The new cab­ins from the reoc­cu­pa­tion demo remain but they seem at risk of being destroyed soon. Dur­ing the week­end there were huge num­bers of injuries for the first time since the evic­tions start­ed, and also instances of police attack­ing bar­ri­cades in the mid­dle of the night. They are now mil­i­taris­ing the zone, stay­ing all night on the roads to stop us from mov­ing around, and grad­u­al­ly upping the pres­sure.

We got the mes­sage yes­ter­day that the evic­tions will stop if we stop build­ing, and I can smile as I type that I feel quite sure that will not hap­pen. We will con­tin­ue to build, and con­tin­ue to fight against this oppres­sion and this use­less sense­less project. We will not let them win so eas­i­ly. There are more of us than ever and it is impos­si­ble not to feel strong, even as they destroy our homes again and again. We have ever more peo­ple to keep rebuild­ing.

There is a call out for sol­i­dar­i­ty actions on our web­site (www.zad.nadir.org)

The strug­gle con­tin­ues for us, and we wel­come the sup­port of those as dis­il­lu­sioned as us with this com­pa­ny, the state, and the con­trol on our every day lives. It’s far from over, this is just the begin­ning.

Call out for actions dur­ing the moment of evic­tion of the ZAD
 https://zad.nadir.org/spip.php?article175

new call out for occu­pa­tion
https://zad.nadir.org/spip.php?article348

Sizewell Nuclear Power Stations Blockaded

26.11.2012

The road lead­ing to Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tions A & B has been block­ad­ed since 6:45 this morn­ing. The pro­tes­tors are still there (9:00).

 Waste of Our Future

26.11.2012

The road lead­ing to Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tions A & B has been block­ad­ed since 6:45 this morn­ing. The pro­tes­tors are still there (9:00).

 Waste of Our Future

At 6:45am this morn­ing cam­paign­ers oppos­ing nuclear new build block­ad­ed the entrance to EDF’s Sizewell facil­i­ty in Suf­folk lim­it­ing access to the site by vis­i­tors to the site. This is the sec­ond time in three days that EDFs nuclear facil­i­ties have been tar­get­ed by activists, fol­low­ing hot on the heels of Friday’s dawn Block­ade at Hink­ley Point in Som­er­set.

EDF began their Con­sul­ta­tion on the 21 Nov, and the pub­lic have just eleven weeks (until the 6th Feb 2012) to wade through the 342 pages of con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ments. The glossy Brochures encour­age us to play an ‘active’ role in the con­sul­ta­tion, so here we are. Said mom Nik­ki Clark, “The government’s ener­gy pol­i­cy and changes to the plan­ning sys­tem are pre-emp­tive­ly deny­ing peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise their legit­i­mate con­cerns about nuclear pow­er. This makes acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence extreme­ly impor­tant as with­out this there is no oth­er way to raise these issues.” She went on to say “If the process already under­way at Hink­ley Point in Som­er­set where I live is any­thing to go by, then the pub­lic here at Sizewell can expect a sham process which is noth­ing more than a cyn­i­cal box-tick­ing exer­cise designed to allow EDF to claim that they have ‘lis­tened’ to people’s con­cerns. The new process that the gov­ern­ment has intro­duced to ‘fast-track new nuclear’ is total­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and there­fore, ille­git­i­mate.

On Fri­day the gov­ern­ment announced that “they have reached a land­mark agree­ment on ener­gy pol­i­cy that will send a durable sig­nal to investors”1 so that they can intro­duce the Ener­gy Bill next week how­ev­er most com­men­ta­tors believe that The Elec­tric­i­ty reform Act is more about sub­si­dis­ing new nuclear that it is about sub­si­dis­ing ‘low car­bon tech­nol­o­gy, the proof (if any were need­ed) lies in the fact that the gov­ern­ments pro­pos­als as they stand will ham­string gen­uine­ly renew­able projects2.

On-shore wind would only require a strike price of around £80 per megawatt hour com­pared to the min­i­mum ‘strike’ price of around £165 per MW/h that would be need­ed to sub­sidise new nuclear build. This would not be the only ‘subsidy-that-isn’t‑a-subsidy ‘ that nuclear pow­er would require. Said Mell Har­ri­son, Edu­ca­tion Direc­tor at a local Eco-cen­tre “The biggest ‘subsidy-that-isn’t‑a-subsidy’ that this indus­try will receive will be the one that comes in the form of high­ly tox­ic radioac­tive waste lega­cy they plan to store on-site at new build facil­i­ties. The cost of these sub­si­dies will be borne by our grand­chil­dren both phys­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly in around six­ty years time when EDF get to leave the waste where it is and return ‘cus­tody’ of it to our grand­chil­dren. This will be in the form of high­ly dan­ger­ous waste that will require a min­i­mum of a fur­ther hun­dred years cool­ing in-situ before any­one can even begin to think about pack­ag­ing it for any fur­ther ‘storage’3

Said local cam­paign­er Helen Swanston “Most peo­ple around here don’t realise that EDF were giv­en the go ahead recent­ly to build a dry stor­age facil­i­ty to house the back­log of 1,466 tonnes of radioac­tive waste that is accu­mu­lat­ing on site. The rea­son for this accu­mu­la­tion is because the tech­nocrats of yester-year promised that the ‘waste issue’ would be resolved ‘in the future’ mak­ing fan­tas­tic promis­es about mag­i­cal dis­pos­al facil­i­ties that would mate­ri­alise in the not too dis­tant future. These are the same emp­ty promis­es that todays tech­nocrats and politi­cians are mak­ing to us now. We are no clos­er now to any kind of inter­im stor­age facil­i­ty let alone any kind of final rest­ing place for nuclear waste.” The government’s so-called pol­i­cy of vol­un­tarism has seen only one set of local author­ites even con­sid­er ‘vol­un­teer­ing’ and even they seem to have cold feet hav­ing deferred any deci­sion to get involved until Jan­u­ary of next year.4 EDF plan to cre­ate 3500 tonnes of waste from their twin EPR reac­tors 5

********************************ENDS*********************************************

Notes to Edi­tors:

1 –DECC press release Re Ener­gy Reform Act:  http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn12_0146/pn12_0146.aspx

2 – Dr David Toke is Senior Lec­tur­er in Ener­gy Pol­i­cy in the Depart­ment of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham (UK). He was a key play­er in the cam­paign to estab­lish feed-in tar­iffs for small renew­able projects in the UK, the leg­is­la­tion for which was passed in 2008  http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/are-tories-anti-bourgeois-left-or-just.html

3 –The Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion and Argoone Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in the U.S high­light­ed the dan­gers asso­ci­at­ed with the new high burn up fuel in 2008 in a con­fer­ence where ‘They say that fuels with a burn-up above 45 GWd/tU cause pre­vi­ous­ly unfore­seen safe­ty prob­lems’  http://www.robedwards.com/2008/04/nuclear-super‑f.html

4 – There is deep unease about trust­ing gov­ern­ment enough to comitt to the process to find loca­tion for a nuclear waste dump with con­cerns about the abs­cence of laws gov­ern­ing the process as well as con­cerns about the unsuit­able geol­o­gy in Cum­bria.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/oct/03/three-month-delay-nuclear-waste-burial-cumbria

5 – Peter Lux is a local per­son con­cerned about Sizewell  http://www.plux.co.uk/3500-tonnes-of-spent-fuel-may-be-produced-by-sizewell‑c/

 

Dawn blockade leaves nuclear workers locked out — Hinkley blockaded today

Via South West Against Nuclear

23/11/12

Dawn block­ade leaves nuclear work­ers locked out

Via South West Against Nuclear

23/11/12

Dawn block­ade leaves nuclear work­ers locked out

At 6am this morn­ing 10 pro­tes­tors block­ad­ed access to EDF ener­gy’s nuclear sites at Hink­ley Point, pre­vent­ing the morn­ing shift from start­ing work. 4 peo­ple in arm locks formed a bar­ri­er across the main access road at Wick Moor Drove in a bid to pre­vent fur­ther ground clear­ance work at the planned Hink­ley C site and to protest at EDF’s plan to extend the life of aging reac­tors at the Hink­ley B sta­tion.

 

Sit­ting beneath a ban­ner say­ing “Nuclear Pow­er — not worth the risk” Bris­tol tree-sur­geon Zoe Smith said, “We want the destruc­tion of land at the pro­posed Hink­ley C site to stop. EDF still don’t have plan­ning per­mis­sion for the new nuclear plant, the gov­ern­ments ener­gy pol­i­cy is in tat­ters. With Cen­tri­ca pulling out and the long await­ed Elec­tric­i­ty Reform Act delayed, there is not even enough invest­ment to fin­ish the project. If the tories fix the elec­tric­i­ty price for nuclear so that the project can go ahead it will leave a radioac­tive waste dump here for hun­dreds of years.” The ear­ly morn­ing block­ade caused long tail­backs for scores of work­ers con­tract­ed in to per­form main­te­nance work on the the exist­ing reac­tors at Hink­ley B, EDF have sig­nalled their inten­tion to re-licence the reac­tor again in 2016.

Bridg­wa­ter mum Nik­ki Clark from South West Against Nuclear said, “Not only do we not need new nuclear, we cer­tain­ly don’t need to extend the life of the exist­ing reac­tors even fur­ther. Just this year alone reac­tor no 4 in the B sta­tion has scrammed at least three times. EDF like to call these emer­gency shut­downs ‘unplanned out­ages’ but this delib­er­ate­ly con­ceals the fact that these age­ing reac­tors are now in a dan­ger­ous con­di­tion. In 2008 the reg­u­la­tors threat­ened British Ener­gy with clo­sure of the site. The reac­tors do not have any few­er cracks in the graphite core now than they did then. Do we have to have our own Fukushima­here in Som­er­set­be­fore we aban­don this insan­i­ty and embrace a renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion in the UK?”

Stop Hink­ley spokesper­son Theo Simon said, “We sup­port this protest. New nuclear is dead in the water. We need pub­lic invest­ment in a renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion which could cre­ate a mil­lion cli­mate jobs and cut ener­gy bills through a pro­gramme of home insu­la­tion and ener­gy-effi­cien­cy. With it’s mas­sive marine ener­gy resource, West Som­er­setis per­fect­ly placed to lead the way in renew­ables, but EDF’s plans would turn it into a tox­ic waste dump for our grand­chil­dren.”

Via South West Against Nuclear
Pro­tes­tors are block­ing the road out­side Hink­ley Point TODAY
Fri­day, 23 Novem­ber, 2012, 7:52

Pro­tes­tors are block­ing the road out­side Hink­ley Point TODAY stop­ping the work­ers enter­ing the site. Lis­ten to BBC Som­er­set report 7.40am. Pass on the word those who want to take a flask of cof­fee to them, great­ly received.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/bbc_radio_somerset_sound/listenlive

La Zad Re-occupied!

On Sat­ur­day, after 3 weeks of evic­tions, more than 30000 came to re-occu­py the ZAD. As soon as the demon­stra­tion arrived, 5 pre-assem­bled struc­tures start­ed to get built: a meet­ing-room of 80m², a kitchen house, 2 dorms, a toi­let and bath block and a work­shop.

On Sat­ur­day, after 3 weeks of evic­tions, more than 30000 came to re-occu­py the ZAD. As soon as the demon­stra­tion arrived, 5 pre-assem­bled struc­tures start­ed to get built: a meet­ing-room of 80m², a kitchen house, 2 dorms, a toi­let and bath block and a work­shop. On Mon­day, the work is con­tin­u­ing. Thanks to a sum of inge­nios­i­ty, mutu­alised know-hows and end­less human chains to bring the tons of planks, as well as cross beams, met­al sheets and straw need­ed for the work, the con­struc­tion showed rapid progress. The achieve­ment is breath­tak­ing and can only leave large smiles on the faces. In order to cel­e­brate that, and inau­gu­rate, a cock­tail is announced, this mon­day, at 17:00 on the build­ing site. We would like to remind that these new col­lec­tive build­ings are meant to become a cross­ing point for all oppo­nents and a head­quar­ter to organ­ise the resis­tance to the air­port con­struc­tion. The pre­fec­ture, who knows what they are about, have announced as of Sat­ur­day, that these new huts were “woed to dis­s­ap­pear”. But the land on which most of the recon­struc­tions were made is lent by a pri­vate own­er, opposed to the air­port and also ongo­ing expro­pri­a­tion. There­fore, there is no judi­cial way to evict these hous­es with­out lenghty pro­ce­dures, regard­ing the urban­ism laws, to be per­formed by the pre­fec­ture. We can there­fore reas­sure to every­one who got involved in the reoc­cu­pa­tion on Sat­ur­day, that, accord­ing to the law, these build­ing can­not be destroyed at least for some time. In par­ralel to these large con­struc­tions, new huts and liv­ing spaces are being rebuilt on squat­ted lands owned by Vin­ci. Dur­ing the whole week, tree­hous­es will nest again in the Rohanne for­est. Whether on lent or squat­ted land, we call for com­mon defense of each hut with all the required deter­mi­na­tion. If they evict us, we resist, and we come back!