Columbus, OH — At 11:30am Monday morning, about 100 Earth First! activists occupied the headquarters of American Municipal Power, an electric utility that provides statewide service to member communities. 
As part of an ongoing series of direct actions, activists confronted CEO Marc Gerken and demanded that AMP-Ohio cancel its plans for construction of a new and widely opposed coal-fired power plant in southeast Ohio.
Dozens of activists charged the building and occupied the lobby, disabled video cameras with silly string, danced on furniture, banged on pots and pans, and delivered anti-coal messages to employees with chants and songs. Five activists locked themselves down in the lobby and two activists climbed the flagpoles in front of the building, hoisting signs that read “no new coal!” and “we won’t stop until you do.”
Business as usual was disrupted for several hours while police forcibly removed demonstrators from the property, arresting eight. Bail money is still needed for several activists. Please help out by donating to the legal fund at http://earthfirstjournal.org.
Morgan Kipler, an Earth First!er from Columbus, said that the proposed plant “is currently the greatest threat to Ohio’s health, safety, and welfare, and must be cancelled immediately.”
Earth First! opposes the power plant for a number of reasons. The proposed plant would be a major climate change contributor, emitting 7.3 million tons of CO2 into the air every year. The local impact is just as dramatic: Meigs County ranks number one in the state for lung cancer incidence, and number two for related mortalities.
A study released by the Clean Air Task Force shows Meigs County to be in the center of a tri-state hot zone for premature death rates directly attributable to PM 2.5 exposures. PM 2.5 is the particulate matter released by power plants responsible for a multiplicity of life-shortening illnesses including cancer and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
If the proposed AMP-OH plant is built, it will become one of five coal plants within a ten-mile radius to the southern tip of Meigs County. Additionally, four more coal-fired plants have been proposed for construction in the area by other electric utility providers. This is an obvious injustice as it forms the backbone of the highest concentration of coal-fired power plants in the country.
The power plant is also a bad deal for electric customers. Costs of construction have escalated from $1.2 to $2.9 billion since October of 2005, an increase of about $1.7 million per day over the last 3 years! At a time of cost hikes, nationwide power plant cancellations and rejections, and pending federal legislation on global warming emissions, AMP-Ohio is making a bad decision for its member communities, the people of Meigs County, and future generations in Ohio and beyond.
Earth First! said it will continue to resist the construction of the AMP-Ohio plant with a diversity of tactics.
http://www.nbc4i.com/midwest/cmh/news.apx.-content-articles-CMH-2008-07-07-0020.html
http://www.wsyx6.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wsyx_vid_741.shtml
http://www.10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2008/07/07/plant_protest.html?sid=102
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wosu/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1313887§ionID=1
http://www.wdtn.com/Global/story.asp?S=8632103
http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/07/07/protest.html?sid=101
http://www.10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2008/07/07/plant_protest.html?sid=102
http://athensnews.com/news/local/2008/jul/10/columbus-protest-against-meigs-county-power-plant-/
http://www.wtte28.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.oh/32515dad-www.wtte28.com.shtml
http://www.mydailytribune.com/articles/2008/07/09/news/news01.txt
http://www.mydailysentinel.com/articles/2008/07/09/news/news00.txt
cbusimc.org/node/13900
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/3/2008/3154
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/07/08/utility-headquarters-overtaken-by-earth-first-no-more-business-as-usual
Earth First! is an international movement rooted in bio-centrism and direct action. This action concludes the Earth First! 2008 national gathering, which took place in Southern Ohio from June 30-July 7th.
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Yip yip, go EF!, keep it up keep it up! No Compromise! The Tredegar 12 stand with you.
Hey oh! Looking great friends! Thanks for trying to save citizens from billions of dollars of bad investment that could be spent on clean renewable energy. And looking good at the same time.
Did you know that these plants cost around $2-4 billion, plus the cost of mining and transporting the coal on a daily basis and the Coal River Wind farm, which provide an avg. of 440 MW of wind power, would be less than $1 Billion?
How exciting that these cost effective, environmentally friendly and socially just ways of getting our electricity are just around the corner.
Now we just have to stop 100 more coal plants and a few more nukes and work for energy efficiency and we will be all set.
Huzzah! and Onward!
One of the news articles said that the protesters threw shrimp at the employees?!
FYI - No shrimp was thrown, no doors were broken, and definitely no fire alarms were pulled!
Straight up misinformation from the company…
The only ones being violent were the employees and the police. An AMP employee injured one climber while on the flagpole, the police maced 20 people including medics, and they threatened to taze the flagpoles to force our climbers down.
When shrimp are outlawed, only outlaws will have shrimp.
As an organizer of the March action in the very same office, I am very please to see the pressure escalating. They agreed to our demand then, and then backed out. I’m glad we (as the movement) can keep consistent pressure on our targets. And Mattie, whatever role you played in this, thank you very much.
I assume EF is working more with OSEC. Way to go! If not, way to go anyway.
Morgan
I am glad you are proud of being a terrorist. Why don’t you try to benefit society versus disrupt it?
Trying to make changes via negative, violent interactions are the work of a terrorist are only hurting everyone.
Why don’t you try to helping people or thinking of a solution? Maybe after you live a few years you will see this as experience tells all. Until then enjoy using the product you are lobbying against.
Me on the other hand will enjoy my geothermal and continue working on solutions in a positive light.
Back to my tree planting which is helping the country more than your negative actions.
I really have to ask - is “Stark” someone from The Breakthough Institute? He/she seems to be regurgitating their often embarrassing politics - and must at least be a big fan of them.
the answer is no. Guess again.