Local activists protest planned road on Ag Reserve
Event was part of national Youth Climate March.
As thousands of young people across the country participated in the Youth Climate March on Saturday, a dozen area activists marched to save their own piece of “paradise” in the Palm Beach County Agricultural Reserve.
Ari Silver, 16, who attends Olympic Heights High School near Boca Raton, said it’s up to his generation to reverse climate change, and he’s starting by fighting to stop a road from being paved through the county’s Agricultural Reserve.
“This march is specifically trying to protect the Agricultural Reserve, land promised to us to be kept as agriculture but is now being paved over as we speak,” Silver said. “We love the fresh fruit and veggies and all of the benefits it gives to our economy. To see politicians destroying it willy-nilly is heartbreaking.”
The county’s Agriculture Reserve is 22,000 acres set aside for conservation and farming west of Boynton Beach. Barry Silver, Ari’s dad and an attorney and activist, said that as more developers move in, more concessions are made that stray from the land’s original purpose.
“We don’t want this road to pave over paradise,” Barry Silver said. “We don’t want to pave over the last of our open space.”
Pat Edmondson, vice chairwoman of the Palm Beach County Soil and Water Conservation District, said the road “represents developer’s desire to increase residential density in the Agricultural Preserve.”
“We can feed ourselves and the rest of the country if necessary with food grown in the Agricultural Preserve,” she said. “What we grow here is a matter of national security.”
Bill Vale, who is running for a County Commission seat in District 4, said he’s been fighting over-development in the county for a decade.
“If we protect the Ag Reserve, we protect our quality of life,” he said.
For Ari, the fight to protect the reserve is important, but it’s just a piece of the puzzle in the fight to save the planet.
“If we don’t stand up for the planet while it’s still livable, what are we going to do once it’s destroyed?” he said.
“We’re not just fighting for our future, we’re fighting for every future generation that’s going to live on Earth. We only get one, so we’ve got to treat it right while we can.”