BERLIN (AFP) – Environmental activists occupying a forest close to Tesla’s factory near Berlin said Thursday they want to stop the electric vehicle maker’s German expansion plans and protect local groundwater.

Tesla wants to expand its factory in Gruenheide, southeast of the capital, by 170 hectares (420 acres) and boost production up to one million vehicles annually.

But the environmental group Robin Wood, one of the protest organisers, said the plans “threaten the drinking water supply for the entire region”.

Activists have camped out in the tree tops in part of the forest Tesla needs to raze to expand the its only site in Europe.

The camp was still in the process of being built when AFP visited on Thursday, with some 10 platforms already installed.

By making it difficult for authorities to dislodge protestors from their perch, the activists’ tactics are intended to impede the expansion works.

“Local people here are having their water stolen. And where the raw materials for cars come from, people face exploitation,” Paul Eisfeld, 24, an activist and spokesman for the protest, told AFP.

Organisers also said they were backing local residents, who voted more than 60 percent against the Tesla project in a recent non-binding poll.

Tesla’s Gruenheide factory opened in 2022 after an arduous two-year approval and construction process dogged by administrative and legal obstacles.

The original plant’s massive demand for water was a sore point for residents in an area that has been hit by summer droughts in recent years.

“There will be no end of deforestation here, because this is just the beginning,” local campaigner Manu Hoyer, 64, told AFP.

“This forest is largely in a drinking water protection area and for me it is a no-go,” said Hoyer, who has been active in the opposition to the Tesla plant since 2019.

“If the entire infrastructure is to go here, then thousands of hectares of forest will have to be felled so that it can somehow be managed,” she said.