Barging in Alberta tar sands facilities components, despite court/street resistance, dissembling them, and sneaking them up Highway 95 are apparently becoming standard, default, corporate operating procedure.  General Electric subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International (RCCI) has been hiding and taking apart such megaloads in a leased Port of Wilma warehouse.  Omega Morgan, Morgan Machinery, and their state police and transportation department facilitators slipped four legal weight “sump sections” up Highway 95 and through Moscow on the night of October 15-16.  Adam Rush of the Idaho Transportation Department said that these smaller, lighter transports are “different from the piece of equipment that is still at the Port of Wilma,” probably only because they were no longer attached to it.

No one blockaded the first two suddenly apparent pieces of the controversial RCCI evaporator that passed the too-familiar Third and Washington Street protest haunt in downtown Moscow at 11 pm on Tuesday.  The vertical cylinders appeared to be the larger-diameter, outer layers of the second, plastic-wrapped evaporator that arrived at the port on July 22 with the similar megaload that encountered early-August Nez Perce and allied resistance on Highway 12.  Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists noticed Moscow city police looking out their nearby back door several times and even walking across the street from them, while city, county, and state police vehicles drove by numerous times, all watching and perhaps waiting for protesters to leave, after the first two RCCI loads traversed the city.  At 2 am, haulers snuck the last pair of megaloads past Moscow area residents, after they dispersed at 1:30 am.

Like permitting protocol for the 33 overlegal ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands processing components that also sought Highway 12 passage but were court-blocked and not as secretly down-sized by mostly out-of-state workers to approximately 70 half-height Highway 95 modules during 2011-12, RCCI also certified to the Idaho Transportation Department that it could not reduce the size of its steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) mining evaporators and thus must transport them through the overpass-free Nez Perce Reservation and wild public lands and rivers around Highway 12.  It revealed its lies when Omega Morgan and Morgan Machinery moved pieces of the court-stranded evaporator through Moscow on Tuesday evening, October 15.  Heavy hauler Mammoet similarly tried to sneak Imperial Oil behemoths weighing up to 415,000 pounds past Moscow area protesters and monitors.

Are the widths of the remaining parts of the huge second evaporator, seen outside the port warehouse on October 14 and 15, narrow enough to not require oversize permits and public notice and thus traverse Highways 95 or 12 unnoticed?  Their schematics originally submitted to the Idaho Transportation Department imply otherwise.  Expect resistance soon to more oversize loads that will compromise Highway 95 night-time safety, indigenous lands, waters, and people in Alberta, and the global climate!  Moscow and Wild Idaho Rising Tide are fortunate to exercise our responsibility as gatekeepers to Alberta tar sands hell!  People across the Northwest should obstruct every such route on rivers and roads leading north!

No Tar Sands Megaloads Anywhere! (October 15 Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

Four Oversized Loads to Travel Tonight on U.S. Highway 95 (October 15 Lewiston Tribune)

Megaloads Return to Moscow Streets Tonight (October 15 KRFP Evening Report)

General Electric Apparently Splitting Stranded Tar Sands Evaporator to Send Parts up U.S. 95 (October 16 KRFP Evening Report)

Mini-Megaloads Head for Montana via U.S. Highway 95 (October 16 Lewiston Tribune)

Megaloads Draw Protesters (October 17 Moscow-Pullman Daily News)

WIRT Scouting the Port of Wilma 10-20-13 (October 20 Wild Idaho Rising Tide video)

Omega Morgan/Morgan Machinery Highway 95 Sump Section Superload Applications & Traffic Plan 10-15-13 (Idaho Transportation Department)

Evaporator at the Port of Wilma 10-14-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Evaporator at the Port of Wilma 1 pm 10-15-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Evaporator at the Port of Wilma 1 pm 10-15-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Four Omega Morgan shipments, roughly 20 feet wide, 15 and a half feet tall, and 75 feet long, sit at the Port of Wilma on Tuesday. The shipments, weighing less than 80,000 pounds, began their journey on Tuesday night on their way to Montana, via U.S. Highway 95 to Coeur d’Alene and Interstate 90 east to Montana. 10-15-13 (Steve Hanks/Lewiston Tribune photo)

Protesters awaiting the mini-megaloads, whose purpose is no less murderous than their larger parts or counterparts 10-15-13 (Sharon Cousins photo)

‘Sump section’ cylinders traveling through Moscow 10-15-13 (David Hall photo)

Sixteen protesters and ten cops witness two vertically sliced pieces of the evaporator stranded at the Port of Wilma quickly traversing Moscow 10-15-13 (David Hall photo)

Evaporator with guard and truck at the Port of Wilma 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Evaporator at the Port of Wilma 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Unidentified module and Omega Morgan trailers and trucks at the Port of Wilma 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Unidentified module and Omega Morgan trailers and trucks at the Port of Wilma 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Unidentified module and Omega Morgan trailers and trucks at the Port of Wilma 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Port of Wilma yard leased for Omega Morgan megaload storage and staging 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Port of Wilma warehouse leased for Omega Morgan megaload storage, disassembling, and staging 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Port of Wilma warehouse leased for Omega Morgan megaload storage, disassembling, and staging 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Port of Wilma warehouse leased for Omega Morgan megaload storage, disassembling, and staging 10-20-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)

Workers at the Port of Wilma dismantle the second Resources Conservation Company International evaporator handled by Omega Morgan, for “alternative shipment options.” 10-25-13 (Borg Hendrickson photo)