Helen Yost, of Wild Idaho Rising Tide, holds her sign protesting the megaloads’ use of U.S. Highway 95 through Moscow (The Lewiston Tribune/David Johnson photo).

Last of the big rigs moves through the mean streets of Moscow

MOSCOW – Helen Yost, the fiery spokeswoman for the activist group Wild Idaho Rising Tide, said she absolutely had to have the last word.

So, as the last Imperial Oil megaload exited this Latah County town late Tuesday night en route to the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada, Yost broke ranks from about 45 demonstrators standing on the sidewalk and dashed into the street.

“I was swarmed by cops, but they didn’t touch me,” Yost said, recalling how she threw a protest sign and struck the back end of the final behemoth load. “I quickly retreated back, but I had made my statement. I hit the megaload.” Continue reading →

As 45 protesters escort two oversized shipments through Moscow, Kooskia-area couple celebrate

Megaload opponents claimed a win Tuesday as the last two Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil oversized shipments left Lewiston and headed through Moscow on U.S. Highway 95.

About 45 protesters, and nearly as many law enforcement officers, ushered the megaloads through Moscow without incident Tuesday night. [Editor’s note: Moscow police issued two misdemeanors on Thursday for two protester incidents.]

Ordinary citizens of Idaho and Montana have successfully challenged an attempt to turn U.S. Highway 12 into a permanent high-and-wide-transport corridor, Borg Hendrickson wrote in an email Tuesday. “Is this outcome a victory for the Davids of the world, the ‘little’ people? Absolutely. Is the battle over? Probably not.”

Hendrickson and her husband, Linwood Laughy of the Kooskia area, spearheaded an effort to block megaloads on U.S. 12, which is adjacent to their home along the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River. Continue reading →

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.

Read more: Imperial/Exxon Ends Big Rig Shipments for the Time Being

(By Kim Briggeman, Missoulian)