Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested

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.