Daily Archives: June 28, 2011

Protesters Call Trimming Root of Evil

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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 tar sands project, which they see as a pending ecological disaster, using Moscow as an industrial corridor. Continue reading →

Tar Sands Project an Ecological Disaster

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Jean M. Chapman

Moscow-Pullman Daily News 6/28/11

There are two commercials on television touting how we “have all the natural gas we need right here in North America.” We probably do, but at what cost to our rivers, land and air?

We all follow the megaloads that are going and proposed to go through our area. This equipment is going up into northeastern Alberta and to the Athabasca oil sands. Why there? This is where Trans-Canada Oil is mining the tar sands. It is mined in two ways: Either by strip or open pit mining, or injecting steam deep into the earth to make the tars increase their fluidity, so that they can be pumped to the surface.

Tar sands are a mixture of clay, sand, water and bitumen – a heavy, black, viscous oil. In the process, cadmium, iron, lead, mercury and arsenic are released into the soil. Large amounts of hydrogen sulfide enter the atmosphere, the gas that gives Yellowstone geothermal features the “rotten-egg” smell. This one operation is the largest contributor to Canadian greenhouse gases. Continue reading →