Six people were arrested by New York State Police for disorderly conduct Friday morning when they blocked the construction entrance site to the Competitive Power Ventures in Orange County.
When completed, the facility will generate electricity through the use of natural gas from Pennsylvania.
The protestors were arrested for blocking the entrance to the site by way of interconnected bike locks around their necks. Margaret Shaw, Pramilla Mullock and actor James Cromwell were among those taken into police custody, along with several others who did not participate in the "chaining up" demonstration.
Cromwell said he supports all people living free from harmful industrial pollutants.
“This is a plant that spews out poison. It is going to contaminate this community,” he said as state troopers cut the chains from around his neck.
Shaw said she was outraged by the prospect of the continued construction of the plant and that it is dangerous to the community.
"I think that it is a horrible crime to inflict the dangers that this plant represents to our community, to any community," said Shaw. "There's going to be a separate ammonia tank, that's huge, that if God forbid something happens, we're all dead. They're going to be using 'fracked' gas in the pipelines, which contains radioactivity, which we all know the number of accidents that the pipelines have afforded us and it's going right through our communities."
Mullock, who lives next to the plant's compression station in Westtown, said people are being forced out of their homes and she claimed that children, pets and other animals are getting sick and some animals are dying due to effects from it.
"We are being locked out of our homes; we are being forced out of four communities," said Mullock. "I'm from Minisink, NY; we have children getting sick, we have families that have walked away from their homes already. This is not fair! This has to stop. This is incoherent. This is irrational."
Opponents of the project continue to challenge it in the courts even though all local approvals have been granted.
