[Update: Adverse weather conditions caused ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil and its hauler Mammoet to postpone the two shipments scheduled to leave the Port of Lewiston on Tuesday, January 24.  If the climate that they disrupt does not again (hopefully) impede their movement, an 80,000-pound and 240,000-pound megaload will travel north on Highway 95 after 8 pm on Wednesday, January 25.  Please see the following, revised, previously posted action alert and join Wild Idaho Rising Tide activists in monitoring and protesting these Alberta tar sands processing modules.]

In the aftermath of President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, Alberta tar sands processing equipment continues to jeopardize the safety and access of Idaho travelers as it transgresses our dark, slippery roads.  Despite an 80 percent chance of rain and snow, not to mention several recent Highway 95 traffic fatalities precipitated by black ice, the Canadian subsidiary of ExxonMobil, Imperial Oil, will recklessly rampage our public resources again tonight.  As the oil company insanely obsesses about the April deadline of its Kearl Oil Sands phase one completion and as dozens of tar sands refineries and pipelines expand across the continent, two more shipped modules will decrease remaining Port of Lewiston megaloads to about ten.

Ignoring common sense and decency, these two transports, respectively weighing 80,000 and 240,000 pounds and measuring 93 and 115 feet long, will depart the port after 8 pm on Wednesday, January 25.  The two-lane blocking, 24 feet wide, 15 feet high behemoths will move separately up weather-challenged Highway 95 except through Moscow, where their convoy of state troopers, pilot vehicles, and flaggers will converge into a single configuration.  Tonight, the smaller megaload on a conventional trailer will attempt to reach a parking/staging area near Lookout Pass on Interstate 90, while the 120-ton monster on a hydraulic trailer will damage our infrastructure all the way to Worley, Idaho, and beyond.

If you cannot bear to permit further industrial abuse of the vast boreal forest and its indigenous, subsistence cultures, including rare woodland caribou and half of North American bird species, join Wild Idaho Rising Tide activists this Wednesday at 7:30 pm and after our protest to monitor and capture megaload missteps with videos, photos, audio recordings, and notes.  This evidence is crucial to denouncing tar sands supply routes through our region and thus Alberta operations growth.  To refute Imperial Oil’s plan to further pillage and proliferate carbon and neglect the costs paid for its profits in human lives and ecological/climatic disasters, participate in a Wednesday demonstration that will gather between 9:30 and 10 pm.  For either endeavor, please meet concerned citizens on the north side of City Hall, at the corner of Washington and Second streets in Moscow.