Environmental Activist Gets 6 Years in Nuclear Sabotage Scheme

A member of the environmental group Earth First! was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for his role in an alleged conspiracy to damage nuclear installations in three states.

The sentence for Mark Davis was the maximum permitted under an agreement in which he pleaded guilty to malicious destruction of property at Snowbowl ski resort near Flagstaff, Ariz. He also was ordered to pay about $20,000 restitution for the damage.

U.S. District Judge Robert Broomfield accepted plea bargains on behalf of the four other defendants in what officials said was a conspiracy to damage nuclear sites in California, Colorado and Arizona.

Vandalizing the ski resort, damaging power poles near a uranium mine near the Grand Canyon and damaging power lines leading to an Arizona aqueduct were seen as rehearsals for the larger projects to come, authorities said.

In a lengthy and emotional statement, Davis told the judge that he acknowledged his actions and his responsibility for them but also said he was trying to protect himself and others from the potentially deadly danger of nuclear plants.

His attorney, Wellborn Jack Jr., said Davis “knows as a participant in this trial that ‘monkey-wrenching’ as a form of environmental activism, as a political expression, is dead.”

The term applied to acts of environmental protest and came from a book by the late environmentalist Edward Abbey. The book gave rise to Earth First!, an activist organization. Its founder, Dave Foreman of Tucson, was among the defendants.

Foreman, 44, pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy, which carries a five-year maximum term. If he abides by the terms in the plea bargain, his sentence would be delayed five years, after which he could plead guilty to a misdemeanor.

Prosecutors said the defendants had targeted the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant outside of Denver, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Generating Facility near San Luis Obispo, Calif., and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix.