A showdown is brewing near Port Mayaca in Martin County as a group of environmental protesters are camping out for a second night tonight demanding access to a natural swamp on land owned by Florida Power and Light Co.

“If they don’t open the swamp, we will cross the tracks and risk arrest,” said Peter Shultz of Hobe Sound, a member of Everglades Earth First. The Barley Barber Swamp is on property FPL uses for its power-generation plant west of Indiantown. Once open to the public for tours, the 450-acre swamp was closed after Sept. 11, 2001 for security concerns, FPL officials said.

The protesters are claiming the power plant is drying up the swamp.

“That swamp is conservation land and cannot be altered,” Shultz said. “We want it opened up to the public.”

Peter “Panagioti” Tsolkas, one of the key protesters, said several of them have camped out on an access road near FPL property close to the banks of Lake Okeechobee. They rotate people out every couple hours.

He said Martin County sheriff’s deputies are preventing them from entering the swamp, which he said is public land, and threatening to arrest them for trespassing.

“We intend to go in because we have legal standing,” said Tsolkas, who was arrested in 2004 for erecting a bamboo platform in the middle of Dixie Highway in downtown Lake Worth.

Other members of the group camping out tonight have also been arrested for a sit-in protest outside an FPL power plant under construction in western Palm Beach County last year.

Martin County sheriff’s spokeswoman Rhonda Irons said deputies were monitoring the group and advised them they would be arrested for trespassing onto FPL’s land, which totals 11,300 acres. She said so far there have been no arrests.

In an e-mailed statement, FPL spokeswoman Sarah Marmion said their property west of Indiantown is a unique ecosystem that “continues to thrive just as it has since FPL voluntarily preserved it more than 30 years ago.”

The statement said the company anticipates reopening the swamp to the public in 2010, when a new solar energy plant being built on the property is expected to be completed.

Martin County also tries to work with FPL to open the swamp

Meanwhile a Martin County official who worked as a tour guide at the swamp as a youth said the county may be resurrecting its own efforts to get public access to the swamp.

Environmentally Sensitive Lands Administrator Chuck Barrowclough tried to talk FPL officials into re-opening the swamp for tours in 2006, but he said the talks did not go very far because the county did not have the money needed to pay for the swamp’s upkeep and run tours. He said county commissioners last year made one of their key objectives the development of eco-tourism to diversify the county’s economy.

Barrowclough said county officials are working on a new proposal to use county tourist money, derived from the county’s hotel bed tax, to pay for a public access program that would allow activities like kayaking and bird watching tours on FP&L’s property. Tax revenue and admissions fees would cover the costs, and the tourists would bring revenue to the community.

“It’s one of our greatest natural resources,” Barrowclough said of the swamp.

But Barrowclough said he did not agree with the protestors argument that the swamp was public property.

“I think there are much better ways to get access to a natural resource,” he said.

Group member, Taylor Sanderson said she liked the idea of the swamp being open, but not if it meant the public would have to pay to tour it.

By JASON SCHULTZ, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tags: arrest, bird, camp, deputies, deputy, development, hotel, Indiantown, Okeechobee, property, roads, sheriff

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 12:38 am and is filed under Economy, Martin County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.