Environment

No New Power Plant presents CLF with check for $5000

Today, the folks that represent the “boots on the ground” opposition to a fracked gas power plant proposed for the middle of the woods in northwestern Rhode Island presented the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) with a check for $5000 for their work opposing a proposed power plant in Rhode Island. CLF senior attorney Jerry Elmer accepted the check in behalf

Rhode Island News: No New Power Plant presents CLF with check for $5000

October 28, 2018, 10:27 pm

By Uprise RI Staff

Today, the folks that represent the “boots on the ground” opposition to a fracked gas power plant proposed for the middle of the woods in northwestern Rhode Island presented the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) with a check for $5000 for their work opposing a proposed power plant in Rhode Island. CLF senior attorney Jerry Elmer accepted the check in behalf of CLF.

“But this is not just a check and this event is not just a check presentation,” said Julia O’Rouke, chair of the group known as the No New Power Plant, a grassroots effort that has thwarted Invenergy’s desire to build a fossil fuel power plant in the forests of Burrillville. Through bake sales, car shows, dinners and more the group has raised funds for bus ads, billboards near the statehouse and a social media campaign in opposition to the power plant.

“We are grateful to Attorney Jerry Elmer in particular, for he and his staff’s hard work, vigilance and dedication to this opposition. Working with the Town of Burrillville attorney Michael McElroy, Jerry has been our champion against this monster in the woods,” said O’Rourke.

For nearly three years, the CLF and the folks in the No New Power Plant have been building social media campaigns, producing bus and billboard ads as roadblocks in the way of the powerful multinational Chicago based Invenergy in their journey to build a 1-gigawatt power plant in the region. Litigation that has taken place in Rhode Island Superior Court on water use in the Town of Johnston, preparing briefs and calling expert witnesses at the Rhode Island Public Utility Commission’s Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB), have been the work of the CLF and Jerry Elmer since 2015. The check presentation and pot luck luncheon is in praise of that work.

“CLF is proud to stand with the people of Burrillville in their fight against Invenergy’s plans to pave over a forest to build a fracked gas and diesel oil power plant. Today we are more confident than ever before of winning this case, since the operator of the New England electricity grid has made crystal clear that it neither needs nor wants electricity from Invenergy,” said Jerry Elmer from CLF.

The hearings at the EFSB continue on October 31st, said O’Rourke, “But today, we want to take a moment and thank Jerry and CLF for all that they have done. We are really proud of his work and can’t end this fight without him.”

The Burrillville Land Trust is the fiscal agent for No New Power Plant. The check to CLF is written by the land trust but all the funds to CLF come from the fund raising efforts conducted entirely by the folks of the No New Power Plant. Since 2000, the mission of the Burrillville Land Trust, a non-profit private land trust in the Town of Burrillville, is to preserve and protect the rural character of the Town of Burrillville through advocacy, acquisition and preservation.

[From a press release]