Opponents of the South Fraser Perimeter Road are mobilizing for a protest aimed at stopping the controversial mega-project.

Tom Jaugelis, one of the organizers with StopThePave.org, says a workshop will be held this Saturday at Kwantlen Polytechnic University to prepare participants for "mass direct action" on Earth Day, April 22, which this year is also Good Friday.

The action is being organized by climate activists from StopThePave.org, local chapters of the Council of Canadians and the Critical Criminology Group at Kwantlen.

"Our stated goal for this Earth Day event is to disrupt construction," Jaugelis said Thursday.

Opponents of the $2-billion project, a 40-kilometre four-lane highway stretching from Deltaport Way to the Golden Ears Bridge, say it will pollute the environment, pave farmland, increase greenhouse gas emissions and scar the banks of the Fraser River.

The workshop at the university, dubbed a teach-in, will feature presentations, action planning and legal information.

"This is an open workshop to plan action against local climate crime this Mother Earth Day, with a focus on the controversial South Fraser Perimeter Road freeway," Jaugelis said. "We are looking for input from the community in planning this action."

The planned mass action is the third is a series of similar events. Last October, hundreds of people dug up the freeway construction site in Bridgeview with shovels and wheelbarrows, and in December bags of sand were used to build a dike blocking provincial cabinet offices.

Jaugelis, a North Surrey resident, said organizers believe it's time to step up action.

He rejected a suggestion that it's too late to stop the project. Although construction on the freeway started a couple of years ago, Jaugelis said the project that was only "a line on the map" for many years is now becoming a reality, and opposition is growing.

"We've been doing a lot of door-knocking in a lot of neighbourhoods, especially in North Delta right now, and we're finding that it's becoming real for a lot of people," he said.

Proponents of the project say the South Fraser Perimeter Road will ease traffic congestion at key bottlenecks in the region, reduce travel times, link major transit networks and benefit commerce by making it easier and faster to move goods.

The drop-in workshop takes place on Saturday, April 9 from 1-4 p.m. at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Fir Building), Room D-128. For more information, click on www.StopThePave.org.

mbabic@thenownewspaper.com