Megaload Information

During early December 2023, a Korean-manufactured steam boiler transported as a megaload has been slowly moving north from southwestern Montana toward the Rocky Mountain front and a tar sands exploitation site in northern Alberta, Canada.  According to the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), several local, national, and international articles, and eyewitness conversations, the rectangular, oversized load weighs about 360,000 pounds, stands more than 22 feet tall, and spans 29 feet of width [1-7, videos at 3].  While suspended on a main frame between two 12-axle, front and rear trailers with numerous wheels, tires, and at least four pull and push semi-trucks, the combined transport weighs up to one million pounds and stretches almost 500 feet long.

Although some observers say that the cargo originated after ocean shipping at a Corpus Christi, Texas, port (purportedly one of few North American places that can handle transferring such a large load), media sources report that a Scappoose, Oregon, company called OXBO Mega Transport Solutions is bringing the megaload from Vancouver, Washington, over the U.S.-Canadian border.  Apparently, the behemoth has parked all summer at a DuBois, Idaho, rest area, indicating that it previously traveled across southern Idaho, perhaps like prior megaloads, from the Port of Umatilla, Oregon.  Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allies, among thousands of Northwest residents who have protested megaloads and tar sands mining since 2010, are working to further discern the identity, owner, origin, and destination of this fossil fuels industry monster.

The onslaught of this heavy industrial equipment poses significant challenges to local traffic and infrastructure, as the massive size of this machinery requires specialized, hopefully expensive, transportation permit arrangements, lane and entire road closures, and delays, stops, and temporary rerouting to alternate routes of other traffic.  This transportation fiasco is also imposing planned, overnight, electricity service outages on notified residents and businesses in its vicinity, during the cold of winter.  Utility crews are de-energizing and lifting power lines and other electrical components out of the way for supposed safety, mostly affecting street lights and nearby power for no more than 15 minutes.  However, unforeseen circumstances, such as megaload equipment failure and/or severe weather conditions, could potentially inflict unexpected power supply interruptions and further inconveniences, particularly in rural areas with limited infrastructure near megaload-abused highways.  Even larger urban populations, as in the Helena and surrounding area of Toston, Townsend, Winston, and Wolf Creek, could experience brief power outages from Thursday through Wednesday, December 7 to 13.  Preparations for such off-grid living could include provisions like non-perishable food, bottled water, medicine, flashlights, batteries, fully-charged communication devices, and other precautions and resources ready for any emergency losses.

This impactful megaload and its extensive convoy of flaggers, pilot trucks, and accompanying vehicles without police escort begin their dark, regional passage every Sunday through Thursday night at 9:30 pm, to avoid disruptions of daytime travel.  The exact itinerary of this (and other similar?) transport varies with weather circumstances, daily changes, and the remainder of the later scheduled move.  Justifiably concerned citizens can visit the MDT 511 map and application and read the Oversized Load Movement web page under Alerts, to find further, revised information [2].  Transport proponents expect the megaload to conclude its journey through Montana by December 16 and arrive at its final destination by the end of the month.  WIRT has mapped and lists here its recent and upcoming path across Montana [8].

* Sunday, December 3, to Tuesday, December 5: Twin Bridges, Sheridan, Alder, and Virginia City on U.S. Highway 287 (see the enclosed, Wednesday, MDT camera photo at Norris Hill)

* Wednesday, December 6: North of Ennis to Three Forks on U.S. Highway 287, secondary Highway 359, and Interstate 90 east lanes

* Thursday, December 7: Three Forks to Townsend on U.S. Highway 287

* Sunday, December 10: Townsend to Helena on U.S. Highway 12

* Monday, December 11: Helena to Lyon’s Creek rest area along north Interstate 15

* Tuesday, December 12: Lyon’s Creek rest area to Bowman’s corner on Montana Highway 200

Megaload Resistance

Why are Montanans and Northwesterners allowing profiteering fossil fuels enterprises to force such extraordinary risks and physical damages on the basic organizational, communication, water and energy, and transportation structures, facilities, and systems needed by our communities?  Advocates of these extremely heavy loads argue that the equipment used to haul them has to meet state design standards for weight distribution and other specific requirements, to minimize damages to public roadways.  But WIRT and regional partners have documented intensive megaload harms to highways and roadside trees and slopes after these invasions, as well as several instances of life-threatening, oversized load blockages of medical emergency travel and energy infrastructure.

Even worse for globally shared air, water, and climate than highway and electrical disruptions and damages, this oil field equipment boils the life-essential water extracted from the rivers of indigenous territories, to separate sandy soils from the crude bitumen “tar” pillaged from “surface” and deeper deposits.  This megaload will undoubtedly increase the ongoing extraction and production of this dirtiest fossil fuel that not only releases huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere during its mining, refining, and burning, but also coats wildlife habitat and First Nations lands with oily, toxic, ignitable fallout from processing plants.

Despite vigorous, widespread litigation, protests, and blockades by indigenous and climate activists challenging megaloads crossing the Northwest and expanding tar sands development during 2010 to 2014, hundreds of facility-building, oversized loads foisted by ExxonMobil Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil expanded the Kearl Oil Sands project in Alberta.  Every spring and fall, hundreds to thousands of birds land and die on the Kearl tailings ponds, covered with chemicals and oil [9].  Since May 2022 or earlier, these ponds have breached and leaked at least 5.4 million liters of waste into the Athabasca River, upstream of Fort Chipewyan and other Native towns reliant on traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering life ways [10].  Residents have voiced passionate concerns about the resulting impacts on water quality and the health of fish, animals, and humans, from the dangerous levels of arsenic, heavy metals, and hydrocarbons in this effluent.

Also deeply concerned about the re-emerging threat to First Nations of this and further megaload trips across the Northwest to tar sands operations, WIRT and allies are calling for street protests to resist this tar sands development.  Sunday and Monday nights, December 10-11 and 11-12, offer our region’s most viable and last opportunities to confront this colossal monster.  All actions of any amount of constantly agile, strongly agitating activists are valuable to denouncing Big Oil in Montana.  Who will travel and stay overnight or for a few days in Helena, with costs covered by WIRT?  We cannot continue to neglect fossil fuels frontline participation, even while WIRT relentlessly documents, reports, and encourages opposition to fossil fuels extraction and expansions of pipelines, railroads, and highways.  Most significantly, we cannot let this megaload pass unchallenged through beloved Montana, on its way to further tar sands exploitation in indigenous lands.  See the videos of this oversized load embedded among comments on the MDT facebook post, and contact WIRT for information about direct action meeting places and times [3].

[1] Montana Department of Transportation, 2023 Montana Department of Transportation

[2] Oversized Load Movement, 2023 Montana Department of Transportation

[3] On the Norris Hill US 287 camera this morning: a photo of the oversized load traveling through Montana headed for Canada…, December 6, 2023 Montana Department of Transportation

[4] Megaload Transport to Cause Outages in Southwestern Montana, December 4, 2023 Energy Portal

[5] Megaload Transport to Cause Outages in Southwestern Montana, December 4, 2023 NBC Montana

[6] NorthWestern: Customers Can Get Alerts of Planned Overnight Outages in Helena Area, December 5, 2023 Helena Independent Record

[7] Megaload-Related Power Outages to Last ‘No More than 15 Minutes,’ Expected Sunday Night, December 6, 2023 Helena Independent Record

[8] DuBois, Idaho, to Bowman’s Corner, Montana, December 7, 2023 Google Maps

[9] Imperial Oil Reports Bird Landings at Its Kearl Tailings Areas, May 5, 2020 My McMurray

[10] Anger, Fear, and Questions Mark a Meeting in Fort Chipewyan with Imperial Oil, March 24, 2023 Aboriginal Peoples Television Network