Stop the Tar Sands, Idaho!

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[Thursday Update: According to anti-megaload allies, Moscow Mayor Chaney shared her concerns with the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) about Imperial Oil shipment speeds and city transit during the current Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival that draws participants from across the continent.  In response to a subsequent ITD request, megaload haulers have postponed the three Highway 95 transports scheduled for tonight (Thursday, February 23) until a later date.  Based on our interactions with the oil company since last July, Wild Idaho Rising Tide anticipates tar sands equipment passage on Tuesday through Thursday next week, perhaps coincidentally on the Occupy movement’s Shut Down the Corporations Day on Wednesday, February 29.  See you in the streets next week…!]

If you could choose only a few nights to oppose the brutal expansion of the largest industrial project on Earth, Alberta tar sands exploitation, Wednesday and Thursday evenings this week offer your best chances!  KLEW TV in Lewiston will videotape community megaload monitoring and protesting activities on Wednesday, and Wild Idaho Rising Tide activists will fully exercise our First Amendment rights of free speech and public assembly on Thursday.  These demonstrations present some of your last local opportunities to express your outrage with ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil’s tar sands transportation and production projects: be there or miss the action! Continue reading →

Officials Offer Differing Views on Future of Megaloads and the Port of Lewiston

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Two large cranes at the Port of Lewiston may be dismantled by the end of March, perhaps marking the end of Imperial Oil’s use of Idaho’s only seaport for megaloads.

The handful of extra-large shipments for the oil company remaining at the Port of Lewiston are expected to leave by the end of the month, said David Doeringsfeld, manager of the Port of Lewiston.

Three of those are planned to depart today after 8 p.m. The port and Imperial Oil couldn’t provide a tally Monday of how many others will be left at the port after that.

The reason the cranes are still at the Port of Lewiston is they are needed to load the modules onto trailers, Doeringsfeld said. Continue reading →

Seven Better Never than Late Megaloads

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[Update: Wild Northern Rockies winter weather and other adverse conditions have reportedly forced ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil to postpone passage of its three Tuesday megaloads until Wednesday, February 22.  For further logistical information, please see the following revised request for protester and monitor involvement.]

With only a few of the 78 split-megaloads remaining at the Port of Lewiston, citizens outraged by corporate takeover of our public resources and senseless exacerbation of ecological destruction, Native genocide, and climate chaos NEED YOU in the Moscow streets on Wednesday night, February 22, to remind ExxonMobil’s Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil how forever unwelcome it is in north central Idaho.  Between the four Highway 12 court cases and about 40 Highway 95 protests in Moscow and Potlatch, we are kicking Big Oil’s tar sands equipment off the taxpayer-funded highways it has conspicuously damaged with over 70 massive loads, as we expand megaload opposition to Spokane and Interstate 90 (see Highway 95 Megaload Tire Marks south of Plummer, Idaho 2-17-12). Continue reading →

District Judge Sends Kearl Megaloads Back to MDT for Environmental Review

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Late Friday, February 17, 2012, Montana District Judge Ray Dayton upheld his July 2011 preliminary injunction against Imperial Oil/Exxon Mobil’s plan to move megaloads of equipment to the Alberta tar sands via U.S. Highway 12 and Montana Highway 200 in western Montana. He ordered the Montana Department of Transportation to pursue a more extensive environmental review considering alternative routes, the permanence of… two-lane highway turnouts (constructed to clear traffic around megaloads within 10-minute limits), and thus the ultimate impacts of a possible high-wide industrial corridor. As the last few megaloads travel Highway 95 soon, hundreds of these transports are still traversing Interstates 395, 90, and 15 through the Northwest.

Read District Judge Sends Kearl Megaloads Back to MDT for Environmental Review by Kim Briggeman, Missoulian, Montana.

Bill Gives State Authority over Oil and Gas

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Crafted by the Idaho Petroleum Council to accommodate new natural gas drilling and related operations in Payette and Washington Counties, House Bill 464 diminishes local control of industry ventures like fracking by requiring that “no ordinance, resolution, requirement, or standard of a city, county, or political subdivision, except a state agency with authority, shall actually or operationally prohibit the extraction of oil and gas…” For more information, see Idaho Fracking articles on the WIRT website.

Read Bill Gives State Authority over Oil and Gas by The Associated Press.

Washington County Passes Own Drilling Ordinance, Sets Up Fight with State

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Leaders in Washington County now have a new set of rules that require energy companies to get local approval before drilling for natural gas or building refineries. The Idaho Statesman reports that the rules adopted by county commissioners Monday also impose bonding requirements on oil and gas projects. Officials acknowledge the new rules likely conflict with legislation making its way through the Idaho Legislature. Last week, a House committee approved a bill that gives the state much of the regulatory authority over the industry; that measure could come up shortly for a debate and vote in the full House. County officials have been working on new rules for more than a year in response to growing industry activity in the region. In 2010, a company reported promising discoveries of gas reserves in Payette County — and since then drilling has expanded into Washington County.

Read Washington County Passes Its Own Drilling Regulations by Rocky Barker in the Idaho Statesman.

(By Betsy Russell, Eye on Boise, The Spokesman-Review, from an Associated Press article)

Megaloads Going (2/15), Going (2/?), Gone (2/?)!

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Hundreds, if not thousands, of Moscow area and Highway 95 corridor residents oppose the relentless, nefarious parade of corporate power and climate chaos that ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands equipment represents.  With only three more opportunities to express your outrage, please join regional citizens and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists on Wednesday, February 15, to protest and monitor these transports.

If weather does not impede their plans, shipment hauler Mammoet, along with Idaho state troopers, Moscow city police, flaggers, and pilot vehicle drivers, intend to escort three megaload parts of a tar sands processing plant separately from the Port of Lewiston after 8 pm on Wednesday, until they reach Moscow, where a single convoy will cross town and later disperse. Continue reading →