TRR photo by Tom Kane Protestors participate is a “freedom walk” up Canaan Road in Waymart, protesting the federal prison project underway there. (Click for larger image)

Protestors join in prison demonstration

Work is halted due to soil erosion

By TOM KANE

WAYMART — More than 80 protestors, some from Georgia, California, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., joined local residents on June 21 for a “freedom walk” up Canaan Road, cutting through the federal prison project in the Canaan Township.

The group was protesting the prison construction and 30 other new federal prisons that are currently being  built in rural America.

Federal officials say the project will continue as planned. “We certainly don’t object to protests if they are peaceful and there are no safety issues connected with the protest,” said Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBP) representative Scott Ennis. “We are moving ahead and have met every deadline in the approval process with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).”

In an action unrelated to the protest, the prison construction was temporarily halted due to sediment pollution in the nearby Middle Creek. This was the second such stay-action due to heavy soil erosion.

Wayne County Conservation District officials were concerned that the pollution was moving to the Lackawaxen River, and in danger of reaching the Delaware River.

Ennis said that much of the erosion was caused by the unusual rainfall that has occurred. “Our crew worked all through the heavy storm yesterday and our controls of the soil are holding,” Ennis said.

“Wayne County is one of 100 communities around the nation being forced to host a prison due to the FBP’s plan to add 50,000 new beds, the largest single expansion in the history of the federal prison system,” said Sandy Gambuti, president of the Organization of Concerned Citizens (OCC), a local group protesting the prison. Gambuti spoke to the demonstrators before the “freedom walk.”

Holding placards and walking behind a tractor and hay wagons, which symbolize the agricultural nature of the fields taken over by the FBP, the group made the half-mile trek along Canaan Road, which will soon be closed.

“This is one of the oldest roads in Wayne County,” said Mary Malloy, OCC spokesperson.

OCC claims the FBP usurped the laws of Pennsylvania that aim to preserve ancient farmland, seizing land that they had no formal right to seize.

“When they realized we were right, they took the land by eminent domain—an extreme measure,” said Grace DeFina, another OCC member.

“We’re going to shut this project down,” Malloy said. “We can’t allow the federal government to get away with it.”

Shana Agid from Critical Resistance, a group from Oakland, California, said “We’re here because across the country prisoners are being taken out of their communities and transported far from their families who are their critical support systems if they are to be rehabilitated. All this is being done to improve the economic development of these rural areas, including this one.”

The Waymart prison will replace the Lorton Correction Complex outside of Washington, DC and all 1,300 of its prisoners and many of the correctional officers will be transported to the facility, FBP officials said.

Officials said that 60 percent of the minimum security prisoners and nearly half of the maximum security prisoners are guilty of drug-related crimes.

The project was visited by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on June 29. A report is expected to be released in a week, Ennis said.

A preliminary hearing on the soil erosion incidents will be held on July 18 in the District Justice Court of Judge Jane Farrell in Waymart.