Laguna Niguel : Earth First! Activists Protest for Member

Earth First! demonstrators took their continuing protest against toll road construction to South Municipal Court on Monday as a fellow activist pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from a demonstration last week.

Craig Walter Beneville, 27, of Santa Ana was arrested Friday more than 24 hours after climbing atop a 200-foot-high crane at a Foothill tollway construction site in Rancho Santa Margarita.

Beneville, whom demonstrators dubbed a “political prisoner,” pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of trespassing, tampering with a vehicle and obstructing an arrest. He had been held in custody on $10,000 bail, but was released on his own recognizance after the arraignment, according to a court clerk.

Outside the courthouse on Crown Valley Parkway, about 20 activists demonstrated peacefully in support of Beneville and against the three tollways planned by the Transportation Corridor Agencies.

Activists say the toll roads planned by the Transportation Corridor Agencies threaten to destroy endangered ecosystems and Native American cultural sites. They demanded that the state attorney general investigate the TCA.

TCA spokeswoman Lisa Telles had no comment to the demonstrators’ demand for an investigation.

The action last week was the second time in little more than a month that Earth First! activists disrupted operations along the Foothill tollway, which is set to run through eastern Orange County between the Riverside Freeway and Interstate 5.

In late September, eight activists were arrested on suspicion of trespassing when they chained themselves to bulldozers at a San Joaquin Hills tollway construction site in Laguna Niguel. The San Joaquin Hills project is scheduled to connect Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano to the Corona del Mar freeway in Newport Beach by March, 1997.

Trials are still pending from the San Joaquin Hills demonstration. Beneville faces a trial on April 19.