RALEIGH -- Six environmental activists were arrested Saturday in a display of civil disobedience at the Governor's Mansion. They were protesting Duke Energy's controversial plan to build the coal-fired Cliffside power unit in Rutherford County.
State Capitol Police charged each of the six with trespass, said Pete MacDowell, one of the event's organizers.
MacDowell identified those arrested as: Dick Paddock of Chapel Hill; Bruce Avram Friedman of Sylva; Jean Larson of Asheville, Keval Kaur Khalsa of Durham; John Allen, a UNC-Chapel Hill student from Winston-Salem, and Jim Warren of Efland.
Warren is the executive director of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network and was another organizer of the protest.
The six were released on their promise to appear in court Dec. 9.
The protesters sought to block construction of the new, 825-megawatt boiler, which is scheduled to come online in 2012. Opponents say it will be environmentally damaging, but Duke Energy says it would allow the company to retire other, older energy units.
Jason Walls, a Duke Energy spokesman, called the Cliffside project the "linchpin" to the company's modernization plans. "The Cliffside project is absolutely imperative to our ability to bridge to a low-carbon world," he said.
