The General Electric subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International evaporator core at the Port of Wilma on Friday, November 8, prepared for Omega Morgan transport to the Athabasca Oil Corporation’s Hangingstone in situ Alberta tar sands mining operations southwest of Fort McMurray (Rob Briggs photo)

On Friday, November 8, the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) issued a permit for the heaviest and longest megaload of tar sands extraction equipment to recently traverse U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 in Idaho and degrade Idahoans’ roads and rights on Sunday and Monday nights, November 10 and 11, between 10 pm to 6 am [1].  Like the controversial oversize evaporator that met four nights of fierce resistance from Nez Perce, Idle No More, Wild Idaho Rising Tide, and allied activists in early August, this core of a similar shipment that also arrived at the Port of Wilma on July 22 weighs up to 644,000 pounds [2].  But unlike that 255-foot-long transport, this behemoth stretches 297 feet long.  Its 16-foot width crowds out other traffic on mostly two-lane Highway 95, while its 15.9-foot height barely clears standard 16-foot-tall overpasses along the Idaho route.  Hillsboro, Oregon-based Omega Morgan will haul the partial evaporator, designed by General Electric subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International (RCCI) of Bellevue, Washington, and manufactured in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, on a specialized trailer conveyed by push and pull trucks.  Accompanied by a convoy of pilot cars, flaggers, and likely police vehicles, the inexplicably divisible and unstranded evaporator will travel from the Port of Wilma in Clarkston, Washington, on Idaho Highway 128 to Lewiston, north on U.S. 95 to Coeur d’Alene, and then east on Interstate 90 to the Montana border, over the course of two nights.  En route to the Hangingstone steam assisted gravity drainage tar sands mining operations of Athabasca Oil Corporation, southwest of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the corporate parade must safely pull over at previously identified locations in Idaho, to clear traffic “delayed” (fully stopped) no longer than 15 minutes under state laws. Continue reading →