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About WIRT

The WIRT collective is part of an international, grassroots network of groups and individuals who take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change and to promote local, community-based solutions to the climate crisis.

Bill Gives State Authority over Oil and Gas


Crafted by the Idaho Petroleum Council to accommodate new natural gas drilling and related operations in Payette and Washington Counties, House Bill 464 diminishes local control of industry ventures like fracking by requiring that “no ordinance, resolution, requirement, or standard of a city, county, or political subdivision, except a state agency with authority, shall actually or operationally prohibit the extraction of oil and gas…” For more information, see Idaho Fracking articles on the WIRT website.

Read Bill Gives State Authority over Oil and Gas by The Associated Press.

Washington County Passes Own Drilling Ordinance, Sets Up Fight with State


Leaders in Washington County now have a new set of rules that require energy companies to get local approval before drilling for natural gas or building refineries. The Idaho Statesman reports that the rules adopted by county commissioners Monday also impose bonding requirements on oil and gas projects. Officials acknowledge the new rules likely conflict with legislation making its way through the Idaho Legislature. Last week, a House committee approved a bill that gives the state much of the regulatory authority over the industry; that measure could come up shortly for a debate and vote in the full House. County officials have been working on new rules for more than a year in response to growing industry activity in the region. In 2010, a company reported promising discoveries of gas reserves in Payette County — and since then drilling has expanded into Washington County.

Read Washington County Passes Its Own Drilling Regulations by Rocky Barker in the Idaho Statesman.

(By Betsy Russell, Eye on Boise, The Spokesman-Review, from an Associated Press article)

Megaloads Going (2/15), Going (2/?), Gone (2/?)!


Hundreds, if not thousands, of Moscow area and Highway 95 corridor residents oppose the relentless, nefarious parade of corporate power and climate chaos that ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands equipment represents.  With only three more opportunities to express your outrage, please join regional citizens and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists on Wednesday, February 15, to protest and monitor these transports.

If weather does not impede their plans, shipment hauler Mammoet, along with Idaho state troopers, Moscow city police, flaggers, and pilot vehicle drivers, intend to escort three megaload parts of a tar sands processing plant separately from the Port of Lewiston after 8 pm on Wednesday, until they reach Moscow, where a single convoy will cross town and later disperse. Continue reading

Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine


The creator of the Stop the Megaloads Now! video, Wild Idaho Rising Tide member Paul Edwards of Class War Films published this exquisitely crafted 23-minute montage of “a brief and crucial history of the United States” in February 2012.  It accurately captures our collective worldview and compulsions toward justice beyond our megaload, tar sands, coal, and fracking campaigns.  He shared it again recently with a note that we hope will encourage your ongoing dirty energy resistance and activism to extract our communities from our current, rapidly deteriorating, fossil-fueled situation:

“You are…doing what is required, urging the first steps in action, to overcome the Predatory Capitalist System that is bent on enslaving and degrading all humanity and jeopardizing all life on earth.  I’m in awe of your determination and tenacity.  The great work of productive revolution is done by the hard work of a few.  Fight on: you are not alone.”

(Link provided by Scott Phillips and Paul Edwards)

Climate Justice Forum: Alma Hasse & Tina Fisher 2-13-12


Listen to the Climate Justice Forum program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide on KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday, between the Flashpoints and Occupy Wall Street shows, 7:30 to 9:00 pm PST.  Tonight, we welcome Payette County activists Alma Hasse and Tina Fisher discussing proposed natural gas production regulations and interactions in southern Idaho.  We will also air excerpts from Saturday’s Idaho Fracking Forum in Moscow and regional dirty energy resistance news.

The Recently Arrived Natural Gas Industry Pushes to Limit Local Control in Idaho


Republican member of the Washington County Board of Commissioners Rick Michael

Rick Michael, Weiser

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News 2/10/12

As a commissioner of a county that has piqued the interest of the natural gas industry, I am both hopeful about the potential economic impacts and concerned about the risks this industry’s activities pose to groundwater, property values and quality of life. For those who claim there are only two sides to this issue – for or against – I can attest that there is a middle.

Washington County’s oil and gas draft ordinance is a product of months spent researching other county ordinances across the nation, addressing public concerns and allowing for the state’s rules to get updated. The process involved our county planning and zoning office, our P&Z commission, public hearings, etc., and resulted in an ordinance that we believe protects citizens while still allowing for the development of the gas industry. Continue reading

Idaho House Panel OKs Giving State Oversight of Gas Industry


Idahoans unhappy with a bill allocating control over natural gas drilling and exploration compared its approach to unpopular federal mandates like health insurance and the Endangered Species Act.

Despite concerns over the loss of local control, the House Resources and Conservation Committee approved the bill 16-0 Thursday.

Still, concerns raised by Washington and Payette county residents over the lack of opportunities for the public to shape and steer drilling, exploration and production of natural gas prompted an industry attorney to commit to make changes to the legislation.

The hearing came as lawmakers look at how to regulate natural gas, which was discovered in seven of 11 wells drilled in Payette County in 2010.

Read more: Idaho House Panel OKs Giving State Oversight of Gas Industry

(By Rocky Barker, Idaho Statesman)

House Committee Passes Bill Stripping Local Authority on Gas Drilling


Following a full afternoon of testimony, the House Resources and Conservation Committee passed a package of gas exploration legislation Thursday afternoon, including a dilution of local controls. The vote was unanimous.

Suzanne Budge, executive director of the Idaho Petroleum Council, referred lawmakers to today’s Idaho Statesman, which featured a re-print of a Wall Street Journal report, offering a positive spin to the oil and gas industry.

“This is a very exciting development,” said Budge, referring to Idaho’s burgeoning gas exploration industry, which has its eyes on Payette and Washington county farmlands.

But Budge made no mention of Boise Weekly’s current February 8, 2011, report, Idaho’s Gasland Rules Debated, on February 8, 2011, which includes concerns from Washington County residents about one of the Petroleum Council’s measures that would give primacy on well permits to the state, stripping authority from county or local governments.

Read more: House Committee Passes Bill Stripping Local Authority on Gas Drilling

(By George Prentice, Boise Weekly)

Idaho Fracking Forum


On Saturday, February 11, several Moscow area conservation organizations are hosting a series of events that describe and deliberate proposed natural gas drilling in Idaho using the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) method that has poisoned hundreds of water wells across the U.S.  Everyone is welcome at a 5 pm screening of the Emmy award winning movie Gasland, followed by a 6:30 pm community potluck and presentation by hydrogeologist Jerry Fairley, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse, 420 East Second Street in Moscow.  The Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition (PESC), Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), and the Palouse Group of the Sierra Club (PGSC) are co-sponsoring these gatherings. Continue reading

Eleven Megaloads Aren’t Over Until…


We are eager to hit the still wild Idaho streets with our courageous comrades on Thursday evening, February 9, as the dark curtain of climate change dangles over the remaining 11 Imperial Oil tar sands shipments.  Apparent in the hundreds of protesters who, in the path of this industrial invasion, have laid down, sat, stood, walked, marched, biked, chanted, sang, played instruments, made and waved banners, signs, and props, witnessed, monitored, photographed, recorded, videotaped, wrote, broadcast, testified, got arrested, charged, sentenced, and tried, and generally raged against the machines of industry and excess, we are a daunting force of collective objection to all that is wrong with America’s dirty energy secret, Alberta bitumen exploitation.

But don’t drop your protest signs and sit down yet, Moscow (except in the path of a megaload!).  Three more processing plant modules are struggling up Highway 95 and Interstate 90 from the Port of Lewiston after 8 pm on Thursday.  Before these last corporate parades leave Idaho, the world is watching and we are wondering how we will celebrate not only their looming absence but also our victories, as residents of a dozen small Idaho towns along two rural routes have shown huge multinational corporations the door to different routes around our homes and wildlands. Continue reading