Category: Unnecessary Developments

Tasmanian Activists Challenge Mining in The Tarkine

Two female activists from envi­ron­men­tal direct action group Groundswell have tak­en peace­ful action to high­light the detri­men­tal impacts that min­ing in the Tarkine will have on healthy dev­il pop

Two female activists from envi­ron­men­tal direct action group Groundswell have tak­en peace­ful action to high­light the detri­men­tal impacts that min­ing in the Tarkine will have on healthy dev­il pop­u­la­tions liv­ing in the region.

At 10AM on Sat­ur­day, Feb. 2, Groundswell activists deployed a ban­ner read­ing “FOR DEVILS SAKE, DON’T MINE THE TARKINE” from the Alexan­dra Sus­pen­sion Bridge, in Launceston’s Cataract Gorge.  The two climbers– a local law stu­dent and a doc­tor- remained sus­pend­ed from the bridge for two hours until 12pm.

“The Tarkine region of North West Tas­ma­nia con­tains the last wild pop­u­la­tions of dis­ease free dev­ils.   Min­ing and asso­ci­at­ed activ­i­ties are of sig­nif­i­cant threat to the dev­ils of this region” said Groundswell spokesper­son Sarah Van Est.

tasmanian-devil

“Already under direct threat from the dead­ly facial tumour dis­ease, loss of habi­tat sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es the like­li­hood of con­tact between healthy and dis­eased ani­mals. This has the poten­tial to increase the rate of spread of DFTD.”

“A fur­ther threat is the sub­stan­tial increase of heavy traf­fic in the area, which would great­ly increase wildlife road­kill” added Miss Van Est.

A lead­ing wildlife expert, Prof. Hamish McCal­lum, head of Grif­fith University’s School of Envi­ron­ment and for­mer chief sci­en­tist of the Save the Tas­man­ian Dev­il Pro­gram, con­firmed that the mines would have a poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous impact on dev­ils.

“There is suf­fi­cient evi­dence to sug­gest that it may threat­en the sur­vival of pop­u­la­tions of Tas­man­ian dev­ils in the area,” said Pro­fes­sor McCal­lum.

Miss Van Est said that “Self-reg­u­la­tion and token fines offer no real incen­tive for wealthy min­ing com­pa­nies to take mea­sures to ensure pro­tec­tion for the endan­gered Tas­man­ian icon.”

As well as con­tain­ing sig­nif­i­cant dev­il habi­tat, much of the Tarkine has already been inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied as high con­ser­va­tion val­ue wilder­ness. Groundswell is call­ing on the State and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments, specif­i­cal­ly fed­er­al envi­ron­ment min­is­ter Tony Burke,  to safe­guard the area and the dev­ils by ensur­ing imme­di­ate and ongo­ing pro­tec­tion in the form of Nation­al Park or World Her­itage List sta­tus for the Tarkine region.

48 arrested in historic act of civil disobedience to stop Keystone XL pipeline

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morn­ing, 48 envi­ron­men­tal, civ­il rights, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers from across the coun­try joined togeth­er for a his­toric dis­play of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence at the White House where they demand­ed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma deny the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline and address the cli­mate cri­sis.

Among the notable lead­ers involved in the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence were Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club; Bill McK­ibben, Founder of 350.org; Julian Bond, for­mer pres­i­dent of the NAACP; Dan­ny Kennedy, CEO of Sungevi­ty; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Con­nor Kennedy, and Daryl Han­nah, Amer­i­can actress.

After block­ing a main thor­ough­fare in front of the White House, and refus­ing to move when asked by police, the activists were arrest­ed and trans­port­ed to Ana­cos­tia for pro­cess­ing by the US Park Police Depart­ment.

“The threat to our planet’s cli­mate is both grave and urgent,” said civ­il rights activist Julian Bond. “Although Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has declared his own deter­mi­na­tion to act, much that is with­in his pow­er to accom­plish remains undone, and the deci­sion to allow the con­struc­tion of a pipeline to car­ry mil­lions of bar­rels of the most-pol­lut­ing oil on Earth from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands. I am proud today to stand before my fel­low cit­i­zens and declare, ‘I am will­ing to go to jail to stop this wrong.’ The envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis we face today demands noth­ing less.”

 

“We real­ly shouldn’t have to be put in hand­cuffs to stop KXL–our nation’s lead­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists have told us it’s dan­ger­ous fol­ly, and all the recent Nobel Peace lau­re­ates have urged us to set a dif­fer­ent kind of exam­ple for the world, so the choice should be obvi­ous,” said 350.org founder Bill McK­ibben. “But giv­en the amount of mon­ey on the oth­er side, we’ve had to spend our bod­ies, and we’ll prob­a­bly have to spend them again.”

“For the first time in the Sier­ra Club’s 120-year his­to­ry, we have joined the ranks of vision­ar­ies of the past and present to engage in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, know­ing that the issue at hand is so crit­i­cal, it com­pels the strongest defen­si­ble action,” said Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club. “We can­not afford to allow the pro­duc­tion, trans­port, export and burn­ing of the dirt­i­est oil on Earth via the Key­stone XL pipeline. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma must deny the pipeline and take deci­sive steps to address cli­mate dis­rup­tion, the most sig­nif­i­cant issue of our time.”

If approved, the Key­stone XL pipeline would boost car­bon pol­lu­tion tomor­row by trig­ger­ing a boom of growth in the tar sands indus­try in Cana­da, and great­ly increas­ing green­house gas emis­sions.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) has esti­mat­ed that this tar sands pipeline will boost annu­al U.S. car­bon pol­lu­tion emis­sions by up to 27.6 mil­lion met­ric tons – the impact of adding near­ly 6 mil­lion cars on the road.

How­ev­er, new research by Oil Change Inter­na­tion­al (OCI) shows that the government’s esti­mates of the car­bon emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with Key­stone XL under­es­ti­mates the full impact of tar sands because a bar­rel of tar sands pro­duces sig­nif­i­cant­ly more petro­le­um coke than con­ven­tion­al crude, which is more car­bon-inten­sive than coal. The research can be found at: http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the‑t….

OCI’s research shows that Key­stone XL will pro­duce enough pet­coke to fuel five U.S. coal plants. The emis­sions from this pet­coke have not yet been includ­ed in cli­mate-impact analy­sis of the pipeline or the tar sands indus­try and OCI shows that it will raise total emis­sions by at least 13 per­cent.

Shell to Sea campaigner jailed for 3 months. 14th Feb

Ms Ní Ghraidm plead­ed guilty to a Sec­tion 8 and 9 charge and refused to do com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as she felt her protest was a ser­vice to a com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell. The Judge then sen­tenced Ms Ní Ghraidm to 3 months in jail.

Ms Ní Ghraidm plead­ed guilty to a Sec­tion 8 and 9 charge and refused to do com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as she felt her protest was a ser­vice to a com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell. The Judge then sen­tenced Ms Ní Ghraidm to 3 months in jail.

Izzy has been a strong sup­port­er of Shell to Sea for years and her com­mit­ment to the cause is much appre­ci­at­ed by us here in Mayo.
She has coura­geous­ly stood up for our strug­gle to pro­tect our com­mu­ni­ty and is pas­sion­ate in her fight to reclaim Irish nat­ur­al resources.

Speak­ing from the Court, Shell to Sea spokesper­son Ter­ence Con­way stat­ed “Yes­ter­day in Bel­mul­let Dis­trict court, we saw a com­mit­ted envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­er being jailed for a minor pub­lic order inci­dent. On the oth­er hand a Shell secu­ri­ty guard who was caught deal­ing drugs is allowed to walk free. Ms Ní Ghraidm has tak­en a brave stand to sup­port this com­mu­ni­ty’s strug­gle against a greedy multi­na­tion­al that will do what­ev­er it is allowed to by the sub­servient State insti­tu­tions”.

Mr Con­way con­tin­ued “What we’re expe­ri­enc­ing is the selec­tive appli­ca­tion of the law. Yes­ter­day Prov­i­dence Resources dropped their Dublin Bay oil drilling licence because the State has not got it’s required EU envi­ron­men­tal laws in place. The same EU envi­ron­men­tal laws apply to Cor­rib but are being ignored.”

Lifelong Oklahoman Youth Pastor Locked to Machinery in Protest of Keystone XL 11 Feb

Ear­li­er this morn­ing, Ste­fan Warn­er, a youth pas­tor who was born and raised in Har­rah, OK, locked him­self to machin­ery being used to build the tox­ic Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline through Creek land near Schoolton, OK.

Warn­er is tak­ing action to pro­tect the health of the North Cana­di­an Riv­er, com­mu­ni­ties and land that this pipeline would run through from being irre­versibly dam­aged by dilut­ed bitu­men (tar sands) leaks and spills. He is send­ing a clear mes­sage that the cur­rent day colo­nial­ism and dis­re­gard for the health and sov­er­eign­ty of indige­nous peo­ples in Alber­ta, Cana­da, and along the pipeline is unacceptable—from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, as well as a human per­spec­tive.

Tar sands pipelines have a hor­ren­dous track record: the exist­ing Key­stone 1 pipeline leaked 12 times in its first year, and at least thir­ty times to date. In 2010, the added dan­gers of tar sands pipelines were demon­strat­ed by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of more than a mil­lion gal­lons of dilut­ed bitu­men into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er in Michi­gan. The Kala­ma­zoo tar sands spill is the costli­est inland spill in U.S. his­to­ry, drain­ing the oil spill cof­fers and plac­ing the $800 mil­lion and ris­ing price tag onto the backs of local and fed­er­al tax­pay­ers. But it is not the mon­e­tary bur­den that weighs heav­i­est. It is the toll on human life and the health of local ecosys­tems that is immea­sur­able, espe­cial­ly the tox­i­c­i­ty of the dilut­ed bitu­men and undis­closed pro­pri­etary chem­i­cals has proven dev­as­tat­ing.

In addi­tion to the immense dan­gers posed by the Key­stone XL, Tran­sCana­da has been mis­rep­re­sent­ing the eco­nom­ic effects of the pipeline. The major­i­ty of con­struc­tion jobs are tem­po­rary and have been filled by Wis­con­sin-based con­trac­tor Michel’s, not Okla­homans and Tex­ans. Despite Tran­sCana­da and the State Department’s rhetoric of ener­gy inde­pen­dence, the dilut­ed bitu­men trans­port­ed by the Key­stone XL is des­tined for export to for­eign mar­kets after being refined in Gulf Coast refiner­ies, and the Nation­al Resources Defense Coun­cil asserts that the KXL will increase domes­tic gas prices.

“I grew up in a town where the North Cana­di­an Riv­er runs right through, and we can’t let the North Cana­di­an become anoth­er Kala­ma­zoo,” said Okla­homan youth pas­tor Ste­fan Warn­er. “I fig­ure folks have to take action to stop our beau­ti­ful Okla­homa from being marred by a for­eign cor­po­ra­tion, and stand up to fight big cor­po­ra­tions who think that poi­son­ing peo­ple and steal­ing land is accept­able so long as they make a prof­it.”

Warn­er is act­ing with Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance, a coali­tion of Okla­homans and allies fight­ing to pre­vent con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL which will bring dan­ger­ous and tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men from the bio­me-con­sum­ing tar sands gigapro­ject to refin­ery com­mu­ni­ties in the Gulf. This action comes in the wake of dozens of sim­i­lar actions which have active­ly fought con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL in Okla­homa and Texas. In light of reports of shod­dy weld­ing by Tran­sCana­da whistle­blow­er Evan Vokes and the recent release of pho­tographs depict­ing holes in the weld of a pipe buried in Texas, the strug­gle to keep the Key­stone XL from being com­plet­ed is even more urgent.

Updates

At 8 a.m., direct sup­port for Ste­fan was arrest­ed with­out warn­ing and placed in police car. Six oth­er peo­ple on site are being detained.

At 9 a.m., six peo­ple detained now arrest­ed. Sev­en police vehi­cles are on scene. Work­ers have low­ered side-boom in dis­re­gard of Stefan’s safe­ty and OSHA reg­u­la­tions. Ste­fan is still locked to machin­ery but lying painful­ly face-down on the low­ered arm. Police are obscur­ing Ste­fan from view and not allow­ing any­one with­in pho­tograph­ing dis­tance.

At 9:15 a.m., anoth­er indi­vid­ual arrest­ed. This per­son was not ini­tial­ly detained but was pre­vent­ed from access­ing her vehi­cle since 8 a.m. Ste­fan
is still hold­ing strong. It also appears that this action is also blockad­ing an active frack site.

Indigenous resistance forces Malaysia to scale back twelve dam megaproject

A Malaysian state min­is­ter Fri­day said the gov­ern­ment would not push ahead with build­ing a dozen new dams on Bor­neo island, acknowl­edg­ing they have caused out­rage from local tribes and envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

A Malaysian state min­is­ter Fri­day said the gov­ern­ment would not push ahead with build­ing a dozen new dams on Bor­neo island, acknowl­edg­ing they have caused out­rage from local tribes and envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

The pro­pos­als sparked fears that the dams would destroy pris­tine rain­forests, endan­ger wildlife, and dis­place natives in Sarawak, a Malaysian state crossed by pow­er­ful rivers with rich jun­gle habi­tats.

“It is not a firm plan to build 12 dams. I don’t think we will need that. We will only need four,” James Mas­ing, Sarawak’s state min­is­ter of land devel­op­ment, told AFP in an inter­view.

Mas­ing said the gov­ern­ment was back­ing off in response to wide­spread crit­i­cism. Protests over the years have seen activists and locals stag­ing block­ades of roads into dam areas.

“I’m pleased that this type of thing (protests) takes place. Not all that we do is cor­rect, and this shows we need to refine our plans and think again,” he said.

The now-com­plete Bakun mega-dam, which is not part of the new dam pro­pos­al, has already been dogged for years by claims of cor­rup­tion in con­struc­tion con­tracts, the flood­ing of a huge swathe of rain­for­est and the dis­place­ment of thou­sands of tribes­peo­ple.

Despite that, the gov­ern­ment moot­ed con­struct­ing more dams as part of an indus­tri­al devel­op­ment dri­ve to boost the resource-rich state’s back­ward econ­o­my.

Anoth­er dam at Murum, also deep in the inte­ri­or, is near­ing com­ple­tion and two oth­ers are in the plan­ning stages as part of the new pro­pos­al.

Togeth­er the four dams — at Bakun, Murum, Baleh and Baram — are already expect­ed to put out near­ly 6,000 megawatts of pow­er, six times what Sarawak cur­rent­ly uses, Mas­ing said.

“The protests are becom­ing more vocal on the ground so (the dam rethink) is a very good devel­op­ment for me,” said Peter Kallang, mem­ber of a Sarawak tribe and chair­man of SAVE Rivers, an NGO that has cam­paigned against the dams.

How­ev­er, he said plans for the Baram and Baleh dams should be scrapped as well, not­ing that the Baram dam would dis­place about 20,000 peo­ple, com­pared to about 10,000 at Bakun, and destroy irre­place­able for­est.

He said SAVE Rivers last month organ­ised a float­ing protest along the Baram riv­er that cruised down riv­er for three days and was met with sup­port along the way by local tribes­peo­ple.

Kallang and oth­er activists have also trav­elled abroad to lob­by against the dams, includ­ing meet­ing offi­cials of Hydro Tas­ma­nia, an Aus­tralian cor­po­ra­tion that advis­es the Sarawak gov­ern­ment on the dams.

The Tas­ma­nia gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tion pledged in Decem­ber after meet­ing the activists that it would pull its per­son­nel out of Sarawak by the end of 2013, Kallang said.

Sarawak’s tribes — eth­ni­cal­ly dis­tinct from Malaysia’s major­i­ty Malays — fear that they will lose their ances­tral lands and hunt­ing and bur­ial grounds, as the gov­ern­ment encour­ages them to make way for projects and move into new set­tle­ments.

Those are equipped with med­ical clin­ics, elec­tric­i­ty, and Inter­net access. But vil­lage elders and activists say alco­holism, drug use, and crime are on the increase and anger is ris­ing over con­tin­u­ing encroach­ment on native lands.

In one of the block­ades in 2011, Penan tribes­peo­ple blocked roads into their lands for a week to protest log­ging and alleged riv­er pol­lu­tion by Malaysian firm Inter­hill until the block­ade was dis­man­tled by author­i­ties.

Shell — Idiots at work

Hav­ing only just start­ed work­ing on the con­tro­ver­sial tun­nel, Shel­l’s engi­neers are already fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems.

As local peo­ple always pre­dict­ed, the doib, an unusu­al blue/grey min­er­al soil found under peat bog, is caus­ing issues.

Hav­ing only just start­ed work­ing on the con­tro­ver­sial tun­nel, Shel­l’s engi­neers are already fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems.

As local peo­ple always pre­dict­ed, the doib, an unusu­al blue/grey min­er­al soil found under peat bog, is caus­ing issues.

This is the first time such a machine has had to deal with this unsta­ble vis­cous mate­r­i­al. This once again high­lights the exper­i­men­tal nature of the project.

Despite hav­ing tak­en more than a year to design and build, accord­ing to our sources the TBM got stuck after 30 meters hav­ing only just reached the doib. As we write there’s no end in sight for this headache.
The tun­nel and pipeline cuts right through Sruwad­da­con Bay which is a des­ig­nat­ed con­ser­va­tion site, a can­di­date Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC) and Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area (SPA).

Shell has insult­ing­ly named the Cor­rib TBM ‘Fion­nu­ala’ after the female of the Chil­dren of Lir, one of the leg­ends most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Erris region.

Although the envi­ron­men­t’s help is wel­come, we could always use more peo­ple here. Now that the spring is here come and help make 2013 anoth­er unlucky year for Shell.

Back­ground infor­ma­tion on the tun­nel (source : Shell.ie) :

“The TBM for the Cor­rib tun­nel was designed and built in Schwanau, Ger­many by Her­renknecht, one of the world’s largest mak­ers of TBMs.”

“The tun­nel will have an exter­nal diam­e­ter of 4.2m and an inter­nal diam­e­ter of 3.5m and will run at depths of between 5.5m and 12m under Sruwad­da­con Bay”

“When con­struct­ed, the tun­nel will [if it’s built] be the longest tun­nel in Ire­land and the longest gas pipeline tun­nel any­where in Europe.”

“As the TBM moves for­ward, a series of 1.2m wide con­crete rings made up of pre­cast inter­lock­ing con­crete seg­ments is erect­ed.   These con­crete rings, which are fab­ri­cat­ed in Ire­land, will even­tu­al­ly line the entire tun­nel.”

“As the cut­ter head rotates, hydraulic cylin­ders attached to the spine of the TBM pro­pel it for­ward a few feet at a time.”

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com

Alexandra Park: Tree felling resumes at protest site, 8th Feb

Alexan­dra Park: Tree felling resumes at protest site
Tree felling in Alexan­dra Park, Whal­ley Range Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil said it would not be deflect­ed from its plans

Alexan­dra Park: Tree felling resumes at protest site
Tree felling in Alexan­dra Park, Whal­ley Range Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil said it would not be deflect­ed from its plans

Tree felling has resumed at a Man­ches­ter park where activists climbed trees to pre­vent the clear­ance.

The felling was pre­vent­ed last week when up to 70 peo­ple got into Alexan­dra Park, Whal­ley Range, on Thurs­day.

The pro­test­ers set up a camp and a num­ber of them scaled trees in the park.

A Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil spokesman said it would not be deflect­ed from its plans and legal action may be tak­en against the tree climbers.

Pro­tes­tor Ian Brew­er con­firmed some demon­stra­tors were still up trees but added: “There are not enough peo­ple at the camp, it is very dis­ap­point­ing.

“We’ve had good sup­port with our peti­tion but we need more peo­ple at the camp.”

The coun­cil intends to fell 280 trees as part of a £5.5m project to return the park to the way it is sup­posed to have looked in Vic­to­ri­an times.
Raised flowerbeds

The author­i­ty said only 10% of the park’s trees were being felled and local peo­ple have said they do not feel safe in the park.

But pro­test­ers claim the the actu­al num­ber of trees to be cut down is more than 400.

The trees are being removed and replaced by raised flowerbeds as part of the regen­er­a­tion of the park.

The plans also include cre­at­ing new ten­nis courts and foot­ball facil­i­ties and improve­ments to the lake.

More than 2,000 peo­ple have signed an online peti­tion oppos­ing the felling of trees in the project, which received £2.2m from the Her­itage Lot­tery Fund.

Eamonn O’Rourke, head of com­mu­ni­ties and cul­ture for Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil, said: “The actions of a small, noisy band of pro­test­ers have been hold­ing up much-need­ed improve­ments to the park which have wide­spread pub­lic sup­port and indeed all the evi­dence from our ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions with local peo­ple sug­gest that the major­i­ty are behind the plans.“
Coun­cil plans for park The coun­cil said peo­ple did not feel safe in the park

Tim Cooke, from Hulme, who is also protest­ing against the tree felling, said: “It’s not improv­ing the park — it is destroy­ing the park by dec­i­mat­ing a third of the trees.

“I would under­stand it if they were dis­eased but they are cut­ting down per­fect­ly healthy trees.”

Greater Man­ches­ter Police con­firmed a woman was arrest­ed on Fri­day on sus­pi­cion of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

She was not charged but giv­en a police cau­tion.

Stop the Chop — Alexandra Park trees, Manchester

JOIN THE COMMUNITY PROTEST
SATURDAY 2nd FEB @ 1pm

JOIN THE COMMUNITY PROTEST
SATURDAY 2nd FEB @ 1pm
Protest Camp Open Now
We need YOU to help!

Peace­ful Protest @ Alexan­dra Park to stop the felling of 400 trees against strong pub­lic oppo­si­tion. As of Thurs 31st Jan, 2382 peo­ple have signed a peti­tion to oppose the scale of tree felling and wildlife habi­tat destruc­tion in the park, yet the coun­cil are ignor­ing pub­lic opin­ion. The meet­ing on 28/01 to dis­cuss these plans fur­ther was can­celled hours before tak­ing place & the works have steam­rolled ahead felling 53 trees so far. On 31/01, around 80 local peo­ple of all ages and back­grounds gath­ered in peace­ful protest, with BBC North­west cov­er­ing the sto­ry. For now, they have suc­ceed­ed in bring­ing tree felling works to a halt. But the destruc­tion starts again TODAY ! We need your help to save the remain­ing 347 trees & wildlife habi­tat areas!

Tell your fam­i­ly and friends, your neigh­bours and your com­mu­ni­ty. Bring ban­ners, bring good­will — togeth­er we can make our voic­es heard! PEOPLE OF MANCHESTER UNITE!

Meet near the park gates on Alexan­dra Rd South and Clare­mont Rd. 

PLEASE PROMOTE THIS PROTEST

www.savealexandraparkstrees.wordpress.com
Email: savealexandraparkstrees@hotmail.com
Twit­ter: @SaveAPTrees
Facebook.com/Save Alexan­dra Parks Trees
Action Group Tel: 07757 639 668

Decoy Pond camp evicted but the campaign continues! (31 Jan)

Decoy Pond camp – the third of three camps that had been erect­ed on the path of the planned Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR) – was final­ly evict­ed yes­ter­day (Wednes­day 30 Jan).

Decoy Pond camp – the third of three camps that had been erect­ed on the path of the planned Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR) – was final­ly evict­ed yes­ter­day (Wednes­day 30 Jan).

In the end it took scores of secu­ri­ty, bailiffs and police three days to evict all of the climbers – not to men­tion tun­nel­ers, peo­ple in tripods and folk locked-on on the ground! Denied food, water and med­i­cine by East Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil, the activists in the trees also had to con­tend with tor­ren­tial rain and gusts of wind of up to 54mph (Met Office fig­ure for near­by Bat­tle)! See below for pho­tos and films from yes­ter­day (30 Jan). In total, 9 peo­ple were arrest­ed, and the CHD is now help­ing to assist those charged, as they go through the court process.

After 48 days of con­tin­u­ous protest (with 28 arrests) some of those involved will prob­a­bly now be tak­ing a short but much need­ed rest. Nonethe­less, the Cam­paign con­tin­ues, with four activists in Court this morn­ing (Thurs­day 31 Jan), more news expect­ed from the High Court on Fri­day, the “Grannies’ Dinghy” action in the Val­ley this Sat­ur­day (2 Feb­ru­ary), and an oppor­tu­ni­ty for oppo­nents of the Road to get togeth­er to form groups and plan future activ­i­ties, this Sun­day (3 Feb­ru­ary: 4–6pm, The Roomz, 33–35 West­ern Road, St Leonards on Sea, TN37 6DJ).

Many more activ­i­ties and projects are also in the pipeline, so please sign the Pledge / like us on Face­book / fol­low us on Twit­ter (@combe_haven) / send a dona­tion (use the Pay­Pal but­tons on this site or send a cheque) and stay post­ed for more news on Phase 2. A luta con­tin­ua!

Day 48 (30 Jan): Decoy Pond Camp eviction continues!

[Update, 10.43am: First arrest of the day report­ed as cam­paign­er removed from tree.]

[Update, 10.43am: First arrest of the day report­ed as cam­paign­er removed from tree.]

30 Jan: Day 48 of the cur­rent phase of Combe Haven protests has begun with activists still in the trees at Decoy Pond Camp (see here for maps and direc­tions). The evic­tion con­tin­ues! East Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil are still insist­ing that no food, water, blan­kets or med­i­cines be allowed up to the peo­ple high-up in the trees, who faced gusts of wind of up to 54mph last night.

Mean­while, local grand­moth­ers are mobil­is­ing to bring inflat­able dinghies to the flood­ed val­ley ths Sat­ur­day (2 Feb­ru­ary) for an aquat­ic demon­stra­tion of their sup­port for the peace­ful protests.

Five peo­ple were arrest­ed yes­ter­day, bring­ing the total num­ber of arrests so far to 26. All have now been released: one was cau­tioned, and the remain­ing four have been charged.

As we not­ed at the time of the evic­tion of “Base Camp”: This is only the end of the begin­ning for the protests against the Bex­hill Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR)!

If you can’t make it down to the Val­ley this week then please sign the Pledge / like us on Face­book / fol­low us on Twit­ter (@combe_haven) / send a dona­tion (use the Pay­Pal but­tons on this site or send a cheque) and stay post­ed for news on Phase 2!

Two short films from yesterday’s evic­tion:

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Press Infor­ma­tion Note
Combe Haven Defend­ers [1]
30 Jan­u­ary 2013

EVICTION OF HASTINGS ANTI-ROAD CAMP ENTERS THIRD DAY
Local grand­moth­ers to show sup­port with “Grannies’ Dinghy” action this Sat­ur­day (2 Feb)

30 Jan­u­ary, 8.15am: At least four activists are still in the tree­tops of the third [2] anti-road camp along the route of the pro­posed Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR) this morn­ing, as local grand­moth­ers mobilise to bring inflat­able dinghies to the flood­ed val­ley ths Sat­ur­day (2 Feb­ru­ary) for an aquat­ic demon­stra­tion of their sup­port for the peace­ful protests.

Cam­paign­ers are cur­rent­ly peace­ful­ly resist­ing the evic­tion of the Camp, which is locat­ed just west of Upper Wilt­ing Farm in Crowhurst (TN38 8EG) [3]. East Sus­sex Coun­cil have denied food and water to the pro­test­ers – who have faced heavy rain and gusts of up to 54mph, fifty-feet up in the trees – since Mon­day morn­ing [4].

Local grand­moth­ers will be assem­bling with inflat­able dinghies at 12.45pm this Sat­ur­day (2 Feb­ru­ary) at the Plough Inn in Crowhurst (TN33 9AW), from where they plan to mount an aquat­ic demon­stra­tion against the Road in the near­by flood­ed fields – fields through which the Road is sup­posed to pass [5]. An ear­li­er action (“Grannies’ Tree”) was repro­duced in both the Dai­ly Mail and Dai­ly Tele­graph.

The £100m Road project is one of over forty “zom­bie roads” that were declared dead years ago but have now been resus­ci­tat­ed as part of as part of Britain’s largest road-build­ing pro­gramme in 25 years [6,7].

Sev­en peo­ple have been arrest­ed since Mon­day, includ­ing Natal­ie Hyn­de, daugh­ter of pop singer Chrissie Hyn­de [4]. The peace­ful protests against the Road– which have now been run­ning con­tin­u­ous­ly for 48 days, with 26 arrests – have seized nation­al atten­tion over the past sev­en weeks [8].

Adri­an Hop­kins of the Combe Haven Defend­ers said: “Resis­tance has been grow­ing to this awful scheme as each day pass­es and more peo­ple become inspired by the action so far tak­en to pro­tect the beau­ti­ful Combe Haven val­ley. This is only the begin­ning of a sus­tained cam­paign of peace­ful resis­tance to this envi­ron­men­tal­ly dis­as­trous white-ele­phant project.”

NOTES
[1] http://www.combehavendefenders.org.uk
[2] The first camp was estab­lished on 21 Decem­ber. Two oth­er camps along the route, ‘Three Oaks’ and ‘Adams Farm’, have already been evict­ed, on 14 Jan and 16–17 Jan respec­tive­ly, result­ing in sev­en arrests.
[3] For maps and direc­tions see http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/camp-groundrules-directions/
[4] http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/29-jan-escc-still-denying-food-blankets-to-activists-facing-44mph-gusts/
[5] http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/sat-19-jan-grannies-photoshoot‑2/
[6] See ‘Con­tro­ver­sial ‘zom­bie roads’ scheme to be resus­ci­tat­ed’, Guardian, 10 Octo­ber 2012, http://tinyurl.com/zombieroads
[7] http://bettertransport.org.uk/media/26-Oct-roads-report
[8] http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/recent-media-coverage/