USA: Earth First! Blockades Florida’s Dirtiest Power Plant protesting Mitt Romney’s Acceptance Speech

Apol­lo Beach, FL—In the cli­max of the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, pro­tes­tors with Earth First! have blocked access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the east­ern shore of Tam­pa Bay. The envi­ron­men­tal action group is cit­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence in pol­i­tics and eco­log­i­cal impacts of fos­sil fuel depen­den­cy as rea­sons for the dis­rup­tion.

Apol­lo Beach, FL—In the cli­max of the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, pro­tes­tors with Earth First! have blocked access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the east­ern shore of Tam­pa Bay. The envi­ron­men­tal action group is cit­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence in pol­i­tics and eco­log­i­cal impacts of fos­sil fuel depen­den­cy as rea­sons for the dis­rup­tion.

Report from Indy­bay IMC: A30 Earth First! Lock­down at Tam­pa’s Big Bend Coal Plant Dur­ing 2012 RNC
| Youtube video: Envi­ron­men­tal Protest in Tam­pa Bay dur­ing RNC , Pro­tes­tors chained togeth­er, Protest ends peace­ful­ly

This year’s RNC was fund­ed by an esti­mat­ed $55 mil­lion in cor­po­rate pay-offs, with cor­po­ra­tions includ­ing the Tam­pa based-TECO Ener­gy, along with Chevron, Duke Ener­gy and Exxon Mobil.

Accord­ing to a report by Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil (NRDC) last year, Flori­da is among the dirt­i­est states in pow­er plant pol­lu­tion. NRDC found TECO’s Big Bend plant to be in the state’s, “top three most pol­lut­ing smoke stacks.”

Earth First! activists chose this day for their protest in order to high­light Mitt Rom­ney’s plan to expand what the group calls the “ener­gy empire” which favors the inter­est of big donors in oil, gas and coal indus­tries.

Romney’s top ener­gy pol­i­cy advi­sor is the wealth­i­est oil­man in the coun­try and accord­ing to data ana­lyzed by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, Rom­ney has already raised more from min­ing inter­ests than Bush or McCain raised from these indus­tries in their entire cam­paigns.

Local­ly, TECO’s Big Bend plant has a long his­to­ry of pol­lu­tion. Along with being declared Flori­da’s num­ber one dirt­i­est pow­er plant by Flori­da Con­sumer Action Net­work, they were also doc­u­ment­ed dis­charg­ing waste into Cobia Bay in Apol­lo Beach in years past.

But that’s not all. TECO has been called one of the nation’s worst offend­ers when it comes to moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. In coal min­ing regions of the Appalachi­an Moun­tains, TECO has ruined entire com­mu­ni­ties to max­i­mize their prof­its. Ken­tucky coal­field res­i­dent Doug Jus­tice worked in the coal mines for 22 years and said “I have nev­er seen an out­fit treat a com­mu­ni­ty the way TECO Coal has done us.”

In response to the dev­as­ta­tion from floods caused be TECO’s min­ing in 2002, Granville Burke of Letch­er Coun­ty, Ken­tucky, had this to say: “I wish TECO had nev­er start­ed min­ing above our home. Pro­tec­tion for fam­i­lies like ours is sup­posed to come from the state and fed­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, but instead they look the oth­er way as coal com­pa­nies destroy entire com­mu­ni­ties for the sake of prof­it.”

“Dirty ener­gy becomes dirty pol­i­tics. We can’t afford to stand by and watch it any­more. We have to fight back.” Said Rachel Kijew­s­ki, an orga­niz­er with the Earth First! move­ment in Flori­da.

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