The WIRT collective is part of an international, grassroots network of groups and individuals who take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change and to promote local, community-based solutions to the climate crisis.
A major chapter in the megaload saga in the Northern Rockies is drawing to a close.
Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil said Monday it’ll start the final two over-legal loads remaining at the Port of Lewiston in Idaho on the road to the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta on Tuesday night, weather permitting.
The first of 34 immense loads arrived at Lewiston by barge via the Columbia and Snake rivers in the fall of 2010, but were stranded there by legal protests and an environmental review process in Montana.
Imperial/Exxon ultimately opted to reduce the size of the original loads and ship them via interstate rather than the proposed two-lane routes of Highway 12 and Highway 200. Those shipments began last summer, and the final two megaloads will follow the same route that their roughly 65 predecessors took: from Lewiston north to Coeur d’Alene on Highway 95, then to and through western Montana on Interstate 90 and Interstate 15 on subsequent nights.
Tar Sands Action: Rising Tide Portland in Solidarity
“Portland Rising Tide dropped an anti-tar sands banner today from the Burnside Bridge. The group is acting in solidarity with communities, organizations and individuals resisting tar sands development across North America.
Rising Tide’s action comes on the heels of the 2-week Tar Sands Action campaign in Washington DC. 1,253 American’s were arrested in an act of civil disobedience at the White House to send a message to President Obama, asking him to stand up to Big Oil and deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline permits.”
“The Keystone XL pipeline is required for Big Oil to profit off of the social and environmental disaster that is the Alberta tar sands. Current tar sands mining has brought increased cancer rates, polluted water, and mass die-offs of birds and fish in the largely First Nation communities of northern Alberta.
Tar Sands Action organizers have put a call out for activists to hold the date October 7th for further action. This is the final Congressional hearing on the Keystone XL pipeline. Regionally, people are encouraged to visit their local Obama 2012 headquarters and inform staffers that you will withhold your support in the upcoming presidential elections until the pipeline is stopped.”
(Ed. Note: This footage was originally posted on YouTube by a critic. I believe an open dialog is essential to advancing an honest dialog between the various stakeholders involved. Misinformation and disinformation need to be addressed on both sides so that an understanding of the facts can be attained.)
Information is the Key
“The future path of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada will depend on a number of factors including: government actions, technological change, the growth in the economy, and developments in energy markets. Without incorporating the impacts of future government measures that have not yet been specified, the projections presented in this report are based on expectations of the evolution of key economic and energy drivers (such as the world oil price, gross domestic product, and population growth) derived from a variety of authoritative sources. However, as with any projection of this type, the likely outcome associated with each specific driver is subject to a high degree of uncertainty. As such, the emissions scenarios presented here should be seen as representative of a number of possible greenhouse gas emissions outcomes to 2020, depending on economic and other developments, as well as future government measures.”
(Ed. Note: Specific mention is made of the impacts due to the expansion of tar sands development on p24-27. GHG emissions are projected to rise in Canada in part because of increases in the exploitation of bitumen as a source of unconventional oil.)
“Canada’s boreal region contains one-quarter of the world’s remaining original forests. It is home to a rich array of wildlife including migratory songbirds, waterfowl, bears, wolves and the world’s largest caribou herds. Canada’s boreal is a major part of the global boreal region that encircles the Earth’s northern hemisphere, storing more freshwater in its wetlands and lakes and more carbon in its trees, soil, and peat than anywhere else on the planet. The Canadian boreal forest is also the location of one of the world’s largest deposits of oil – Alberta’s oil sands.
With conventional oil reserves in North America in steady decline, Alberta’s oil sands have begun to attract significant attention, both locally and internationally. Currently, the majority of oil sands production comes from open-pit mining facilities, and it is these shovel and truck operations that most people have come to associate with oil sands development. The mining zone currently extends across approximately 3,300 km2 of northern Alberta and, when fully developed, will likely qualify as the world’s largest open-pit mining complex.
What is not well known is that only a fraction of the total available oil sands deposits are close enough to the surface to be mined. The bulk of the established reserves (81%) must be extracted using in situ techniques.”
(Ed. Note: Canada’s boreal region extends beyond the proposed oil sands extraction sites and comprises almost 60% of the country’s land area.)
“… [I]n situ development of Alberta’s oil sands will result in unprecedented impacts to Alberta’s forests and pose grave risks to regional wildlife populations. Existing in situ leases already total 3.6 million ha (hectares), which is more than ten times the size of the mineable oil sands region. To put this in perspective, we are talking of an intensive industrial use zone larger than Vancouver Island. If existing leases are subjected to the same industrial footprint as the Long Lake project then 296,000 ha of forest will be cleared for SAGD infrastructure and over 30,000 km of access roads will be built. Furthermore, new leases continue to be awarded at a rapid pace, and new technologies for extracting less accessible reserves are continually being developed. If the entire area underlain by oil sands is eventually developed, in situ infrastructure could impact almost 14 million hectares of forest – a land area the size of Florida.”
Missoula County Judge Ray J. Dayton granted a preliminary injunction halting the shipment of over-dimension loads along the Kearl Module Tranport Project (KMTP) route over Lolo Pass.
Although this represents a clear victory for those who have sought to stop the shipments along the HWY 12 Northwest Passage Scenic Byway, the language of the document makes no specific mention of the proposed US 95 to I 90 route. The recent shipment of equipment through Moscow, ID along US 95 indicates that the transport of these modules could in the future continue along this revised route. But, there is another obstacle compounding these modules transportation problems – a construction project currently underway on I 90. For now, the shipments may have been stopped. Stay tuned for further updates on Idaho’s and Montana’s permitting of over-sized loads destined for Alberta using this alternate route.
Recent Development
According to the Lewiston Morning Tribune (quoting MDT legal council Dave Ohler):
“If Imperial Oil is successful in getting paperwork reissued in Idaho and issued in Montana, road construction on Interstate 90 and Interstate 15 won’t be an obstacle…”
WIRT and community members protest in downtown Moscow:
Protesters Call Trimming Root of Evil: Project to make way for oil refinery equipment traveling on U.S. 95
Moscow Parks and Recreation staff and T.R.E. Tree Services were shadowed Monday by protesters condemning the trimming of 18 trees along Washington Street to make room for the transport of two loads of refinery equipment by Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil up U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 to its Kearl Oil Sands Project in Alberta, Canada.
T.R.E., contracting with the oil company, was granted the tree trimming permit Friday by Parks and Recreation, which oversaw the work that started at 9 a.m. Monday and finished around 1:20 p.m.
A small number of protesters, many affiliated with the grassroots conservation group Wild Idaho Rising Tide, came out to protest the city’s allowance of the trimming, which they said would encourage many more oversized loads to make their way to the sands project, which they see as a pending ecological disaster, using Moscow as an industrial corridor.
Helen Yost, with Wild Idaho, said the trimming was just one example of “corporate privilege over the public good,” and the protest was necessary on a larger scale to express people’s dissatisfaction with the oil sands project, which she said would cause tons of pollutants to be expelled into the environment.
“We wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves, essentially,” she said. “We’re trying to stay out of the way, but also make a point to our fellow citizens.”
But with traffic limited on Washington Street during the trimming and protesters mounted on the other side of the project, Parks and Recreation director Dwight Curtis said he felt it was necessary to call Moscow Police out to the site.
“It was getting kind of crowded,” he said. “We just thought we’d get a (police) presence.”
Moscow activists mentioned in a recent Spokesman-Review article:
Hearing officer recommends OK for megaloads
More than 200 megaloads of Korean-made oil equipment bound for Canada should be given the go-ahead to roll across northern Idaho’s scenic U.S. Highway 12, an Idaho state hearing officer ruled Monday.
Retired state Judge Duff McKee, in a 63-page ruling, discounted every protest against the megaloads from a group of residents and business owners along the twisting, two-lane highway, from safety to business interruptions to environmental harm. His ruling is a recommendation to the Idaho Transportation Department; there’s still an opportunity for motions for reconsideration, a process that could take weeks more.
“I conclude there was no error in procedure on the part of ITD in the issuance of the permit in this case, or any other basis to interfere with the executive determinations of the department in issuing the permits in this case,” McKee wrote in his ruling.
Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil wants to ship more than 200 giant loads oil field equipment across the Idaho highway, en route from the Port of Lewiston to the Alberta oil sands. The loads are so large that they’ll block both lanes of the two-lane road, creating a rolling roadblock.
All parties now have 14 days to file a motion for reconsideration of the hearing officer’s recommendation, according to ITD, which the hearing officer would then have approximately 21 days to rule on. The parties could then appeal the ruling to ITD Director Brian Ness, who would have 56 days to rule on the appeal.
After that process is complete, or if no appeal is filed, ITD said, Ness will accept, reject or modify the ruling.
About a dozen protesters weren’t discouraged Saturday by the news that the Idaho Transportation Department will soon allow at least two oversized loads of oil refinery equipment to travel through Moscow on U.S. Highway 95.
Members of Wild Idaho Rising Tide organized the demonstration, which began mid-morning where Southview Avenue meets the highway south of downtown Moscow. Protesters marched north on the highway through the city while carrying a 208-foot-long rope outline of one of the loads, which in real life is 23 feet wide, 208 feet long, 13.6 feet tall and weighs 410,300 pounds.
The Idaho Transportation Department issued two permits Friday for Imperial Oil (IMO)/ExxonMobil to transport the loads from the Port of Lewiston into Montana via U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 beginning June 27. The equipment is destined for the company’s oil sands project in Alberta, Canada.
Helen Yost, a University of Idaho graduate student and member of WIRT, said the demonstration was one of many held across the world Saturday to protest the oil sands project. She said the project creates health problems for Canada’s First Nations people, has killed thousands of birds and results in ponds of toxic waste.
“If it’s developed, there will be no way to turn back climate change,” she said.
