Students protest against construction, make impact on environment

By Jade Schwarting

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Like many others in Carmel, freshman Devon McVey and eight of her neighborhood friends got tired of the closed roads and forested areas being cut down due to construction. Different from most, however, McVey and her friends took action and decided to stand up against the construction and protect the trees just days away from being excavated.

“I like trees because they provide homes for animals and cool our planet. They had been putting up the same-looking buildings all around (Carmel) and I just got tired of it,” McVey said.

Two years ago, the group decided to protest against the building of an office complex on a forested piece of land along Meridian near their neighborhood. McVey said their main goal was to halt the construction, or at least get people to think about the issue.

“I got the idea from something I saw on TV. I had thought of the idea (of the protest) that weekend, but since there was a garage sale and it was a sunny day, I thought I’d do it then,” McVey said.

In order to attract attention to the issue, McVey and her friends made bright posters that said, ‘Honk to save the trees’ and stretched the attention of the public further by having one protestor do tricks on his bicycle.

Carmel City Engineer, Michael McBride said that protests are listened to by the government and are in no way a waste of time. “Input received (by) the City of Carmel from its citizens is always taken seriously. When people voice their concerns, it really can make a difference in the decisions that are eventually made. Even if a project is not stopped or eliminated, the final product or the manner in which it is constructed might be modified in order to address the citizens’ concerns,” McBride said via e-mail.

Although McBride said protests such as these have occurred in the past, he said he could not recall a time where he had seen or heard of one carried out by teenagers. He said, however, that with all of the construction in the city, construction protests do occur often.

“Protests to construction are most often staged by individuals that are directly impacted by a project,” he said. “These individuals are obviously most concerned because their lives, and many times their properties, are being affected by a proposed project. Therefore, it is understandable that these individuals would be most vocal about a specific project. However, the deciding bodies must also consider that with many projects, thousands of people stand to benefit by a given improvement. It is the deciding body’s goal to find a way to handle development that minimizes the impact to the few, while still realizing the greater benefits for the many.”

During McVey’s protest, she tallied the number of “honks to save the trees” the group received. She said the number was somewhere over 100 and “we weren’t even out there that long,” She said she planned to send the tallies of honks to the mayor of Carmel, but said she couldn’t figure out how to carry out the process.

McVey said her parents supported her ideas and helped the group by taking them to the store to get posters and supplies for the protest. She said that most people seemed supportive of the cause, mainly due to their good positioning along the road.

“We stood in front of the trees that you could see from the road so that people could see the cause. Most people honked and (kept) driving, but there were a few guys in cherry pickers that drove by and just glared at us. You could tell they didn’t really care so we just ignored them,” McVey said.

According to McBride, many levels of environmental preservation are considered when construction plans are made. He said that construction, if not carried out in a sensitive manner, can have a terrible effect on the environment.

“I think the time when projects could be carried out with no regard for the environment is long gone,” he said. “Every project must give consideration to its individual environmental constraints and strive to accomplish a completed product that is as sustainable as possible. In the past, new construction too many times was only environmentally sensitive when regulation forced it to be. Now, it is becoming more clear that there are benefits, both economic and social, to building in an environmentally sensitive manner.”

Almost two years after McVey’s protest, the forested land still remains but is for sale. Whether or not the protest group had that large of an impact as to stop the construction or not, no one may never know or admit.

McVey said, “(It’s important to stand up for what you believe in) because if someone says someone else will do it then it will never get done. But if you stand up for the issue, it will get (acknowledged) and the world will be a better place.”