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Protecting our Everglades
We
are tired of watching our native wetlands being turned to superfluous
sugarcane fields, then ripped apart by rock miners, sold to power plant
builders, and eventually covered with housing development spreading
like canker over our bioregion. We work to defend the little habitat
remaining in hopes that future generations can enjoy the clean air,
water, and biodiversity that sustains human and other life in this state.
Scripps Biotech
After a partial victory in 2006, where the Scripps Biotech Institute was prohibited from building on the Mecca Farm site in Western Palm Beach County, EEF! activists once again are facing down Scripps. At the end of February 2009, Scripps opened the doors to its new facility, which includes a vivisection lab and plans to turn 800 acres of pine flatland wilderness into a Biotech City.
Behind the walls of Scripps animals are used in horrible experiments, many of which are hidden from public scrutiny and ethical oversight. Vivisection, the experimentation on living organisms, especially primates, rabbits, guinea pigs, cats and mice, is a practice that Scripps researchers carry out on a daily bases in furtherance of biotech studies concerning infectious diseases, biological weapons, and genetic engineering of food crops and pharmaceuticals.
In 2004 a government inspection of a Scripps research facility in La Jolla California found that test monkeys injected with the drug “ecstasy” were also severely malnourished. One of the primates died from overdose and Scripps was forced to temporarily suspend its research. Other experiments have included the deliberate infection of Chimpanzees with Hepatitis C.
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) records, The Scripps Research Institute reported using only 250 animals, mostly rabbits and primates, but also cats and hamsters, in experiments in 2007. But this number does not include tens of thousands of mice and rats in Scripps labs, animals who are not provided even minimal protection under federal regulations.
Phases I and II of Scripps Florida
Scripps has already been a hotly debated subject in South Florida. In 2004, Scripps began construction of a Biotech City on Mecca Farms next to the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area in Western Palm Beach County. It was eventually defeated by the work of environmentalists, animal rights advocates and lawyers concerned with the dangers of biotechnology. Scripps lost big and retreated to what it has called Phase I of the Scripps Research Center. Phase I, which was completed this year, includes the opening of three new buildings totaling 350,000 square feet of laboratory and administration space on campus just north of Donald Ross road. Vivisection and biotech research has been underway at Scripps Florida on the Jupiter Campus of FAU since it opened in February of 2009.
Phase II of the Scripps Research Center will include an entire Biotech city developed on the Briger tract, an 800 acre forest, in the near future. An exact date for the start of construction has not been announced. The Briger tract is one of the last remaining pine flatwood habitats in the region, and if Scripps is allowed, this forest will be clear cut for nightmare projects for the Department of Defense, Big Agriculture, and the Pharmaceutical Industry.
It is important that FAU students, student groups, faculty, staff and the communities of Palm Beach County, and beyond take the fight against Scripps into their own hands. Environmentalists, animal rights and social justice activists as well as people of faith must unite to stop the Biotech Industry and the greed of developers from turning our wild lands and our bodies into their playground. Everglades Earth First! would like to help in these efforts.
A comprehensive guide to the permitting status of Scripps on the Briger tract is available from the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council.
Barley Barber Swamp
The Barley Barber Swamp is one of the few remaining old growth cypress swamps in the Southeast. Several of the bald cypress trees in Barley Barber are over a thousand years old. They are the oldest in Florida and the entire Southeast region.
(click here to see a short video clip of Barley Barber and the 1100 year old bald cypress)
Barley Barber Swamp is being driven dry by the massive 3750 megaWatt Martin County power plant that hovers over it and the seventeen mile cooling pond that surrounds it. FPL purchased the property and promised to keep it open to the public, but after September 11, 2001, it closed public access to the swamp. Following our January 10th action, FPL promised to reopen the swamp in 2010. We intend to hold them to their word and push for an early opening for scientific monitoring.
FPL's West County
Energy Center
The Loxahatchee Basin is home to one of the first Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) projects to get off the ground. The site is already riddled in scandal; now it´s becoming the waterfront property for the country´s largest fossil fuel power plant.
Since
2006, Everglades Earth First! has been involved in challenging the West
County Energy Center, a massive gas-fired power plant proposed by
Florida Power & Light (FPL) a ¼ mile away from the Arthr
R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. The plant, which would
consume over 6.5 billion gallons of water per year, emit 12 million
tons of CO2 annually, requires 34 miles of gas pipeline through the
L8 Canal/Loxahatchee Basin system and would invite over a million homes
worth of sprawl, is now under construction in violation of Federal and
State laws, including NEPA, Clean Air and Water Acts, ESA, the National
Wildlife Refuge Act, RICO, and others. While courts are reviewing the
environmental permits (or lack of), FPL and the Gulfstream pipeline
are moving ahead, considering the ‘Final Certification’
of former-Governor Jeb Bush as their justification.
Over the year EEF! has added our protests to the chorus of local dissent, which has sadly not included several other environmental groups due to FPL pay-offs. We have obstructed the road to FPL’s annual shareholders’ meeting, blocked the entrance to their illegal construction site on the Palm Beach Aggregates, monitored the environmental impact of their sites from public camps, covered the County with flyers and posters, confronted them face-to-face at nearly every public hearing, and filed a lawsuit in the federal courts against them.
No Coconut Creek Wildlands Massacre!
In Broward County, commissioners approved
the senseless destruction of more green space to needlessly put a
Lowe's in Coconut Creek, and on the other side, a Kohl's in Margate.
We say senseless because the 42 acres of pristine wetlands in Coconut Creek have
been recovering since its original demise in the early 1900's when
it was turned to farm land. We say needless because there is already
a Lowe's and a Home Depot only five minutes from the spot as well
as three other discount clothing stores like Kohl's directly one
street over. Yet again, it has come down to greedy corporations wanting
to maximize profits, paving over what is best for the community local
environment.
EEF! has fought this issue in the commission chambers and the streets. On January 9, 2009 Kohl's pulled out of the project, and Lowe's denied being involved. The city commission says this does not impact their zoning decisions on the wetlands. Contact the neighborhood group working on the issue for more information: Concerned Citizens of Coconut Creek.
Protecting Our Beaches & Coral Reefs
In a wonderful victory, a project intended to dredge massive amounts of silt from offshore and dump it on the beach, allegedly to combat shoreline erosion, WAS DENIED ITS PERMIT on March 3, 2009, thanks to the effort of local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. Everglades Earth First! and the city commission of Lake Worth joined Surfrider in opposing the "Reach 8" dredge & fill project proposed by the Town Of Palm Beach.
Dredge & fill projects, often called "beach renourishment", never work - shorelines naturally shift! In fact, such attempts at battling "erosion" has led to even more severe erosion, as the dredged fill is fine silt, not coarse natural sand, and easily washes away in storms - burying coral reefs and clouding up the waters.