Author Archives: WIRT

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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.

Idaho Fracking Forum

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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…

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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 →

The Megaload End is Nigh!

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On Tuesday evening, February 7, three of the remaining 14 ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil megaloads at the Port of Lewiston are heading up Highway 95, together weighing almost 900,000 pounds and stretching 570 feet or about four blocks long.  If weather does not again complicate the transport of these tar sands processing modules, the 15-feet tall, 22- to 24-feet wide rolling roadblocks, escorted by pilot vehicle drivers and Idaho troopers and scrutinized by citizen monitors, will travel separately except through Moscow, where a single convoy will encounter flaggers, city police, and protesters.  Mammoet will haul the 200,000-pound, 175-feet long megaload on a conventional trailer to the Wallace snow graveyard west of Lookout Pass.  The other two behemoths, respectively 195 feet and 360,000 pounds and 200 feet and 335,000 pounds, will move on hydraulic trailers to a parking/staging area between Worley and the Coeur d’Alene casino, where vigilant community members have observed two or three guards stationed at all times. Continue reading →

Natural Gas Industry Bill Compromises Local Regulation of Development

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As some of you are aware, the industry has created legislation to limit the ability of local governments to regulate oil and gas (HO464).  While there are aspects of this that make sense (i.e. the county has neither the expertise or resources to regulate well casing, mechanical integrity testing, etc.), this legislation goes much further.

Local governments would not have the ability to require the gas industry to follow the traditional special use permitting process (a process that has been in place for over 35 years that involves an applicant going before a planning and zoning commission and participating in a public hearing).  Instead, the gas industry would now be subject to an administrative permitting process for all aspects of oil and gas prior to ‘processing.’  So, in essence, this would include siting of well pads and pits, setbacks, etc.  The Idaho Association of Counties claims that this would essentially involve the planning and zoning manager going through a predetermined checklist of conditions (conditions set in the ordinance).  Currently, when an application is brought forward in this process, the planning and zoning commission has the authority to create site-specific conditions.  Under this potential new legislation, all conditions would be pre-determined.  So, the county would have to envision every possible site for a well pad or pit or road use, etc. and write all of these scenarios with their likely conditions into an ordinance.   The county’s ordinance must contain “reasonable” provisions that are not “repugnant to law.”  According to the IAC, it would be up to the courts to define as reasonable. Continue reading →

The Last Thing Megaloaders Need is a Subsidy

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Marty Trillhaase, Editorial Page Editor, Lewiston

The Lewiston Tribune 2/4/12

Last year, more than 70 megaloads traveled across north central Idaho highways — often with an unofficial subsidy courtesy of the Idaho taxpayer and motorist.

Among them were 10 shipments along U.S. Highway 12, including four from ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil’s experimental module. At one time, ExxonMobil spoke about running 200 of these rolling roadblocks up U.S. 12 en route to the Alberta tar sands project.

At the same time, ExxonMobil reconfigured megaloads parked at the Port of Lewiston for interstate highway travel and moved 64 of them up U.S. Highway 95.

Each of them paid an over-legal permit fee to the Idaho Transportation Department. ConocoPhillips was charged an average of $2,210 per trip. ExxonMobil’s transports paid, on average, $175. The companies also reimbursed what Idaho spent clearing the highways of snow and for extra law enforcement.

But from the time the megaload plans appeared on the scene, it was obvious the state wasn’t charging enough. Continue reading →

Climate Justice Forum: Amanda Buchanan & Kai Huschke 2-6-11

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Listen to Wild Idaho Rising Tide’s Climate Justice Forum on Monday night, February 6, between 7:30 and 9 pm PST on KRFP Radio Free Moscow.  Washington County anti-fracking activist Amanda Buchanan and Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund organizer Kai Huschke will update us on developments in state and county oil and natural gas rules, bills, and ordinances.  Joann Muneta will discuss Moscow Farmers Market tabling changes, and show host Helen Yost will address the costs of Idaho megaloads and upcoming Moscow protests and fracking documentaries, forums, and petitions.

Idaho Transportation Department: Sharing the Roads with Megafreeloaders

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The Idaho Statesman Editorial Board, Boise

The Idaho Statesman 2/1/12

When it comes to the oversized truck shipments known as “megaloads,” everything is big. The size and weight, the controversy, the inconvenience to motorists stuck on the highway at the wrong time — and now, even the taxpayer subsidy.

The Idaho Transportation Department is supposed to recoup costs associated with the megaloads. But according to ITD, proceeds from shipping permits are falling some $645,000 short of covering annual costs.

How’s that for running government like a business?

Read more: Idaho Transportation Department: Sharing the Roads with Megafreeloaders

(Link provided by Borg Hendrickson)

The Dirty Dance: Export Plan Puts North Idaho in the Middle of a New Coal Rush

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Plans to bring coal trains across the Northwest raise big questions

There’s a stretch of road on Highway 200, as it nears the Idaho-Montana line in rural North Idaho, where the biggest traffic hazard is tourists parked on the side of the shoulder snapping pictures.

It’s there that the narrow ribbon of asphalt climbs from the muddy flats of the Pack River Delta and winds its way up onto the toes of the Cabinet Mountains. From that vantage point the huge southern sweep of Lake Pend Oreille can be seen, and the view can be just as distracting as the idling roadside motorists.

Like most scenic vistas, almost everybody’s pictures look the same, and it’s a safe bet that any panoramic shot taken down Pend Oreille’s northeastern shoreline will not only include water, trees, and islands but a freight train chugging down the tracks that run along the water’s edge.

Trains are so much a part of the scenery that they go unnoticed. While Highway 200 sees a steady stream of cars and trucks traveling to and from nearby Montana, it runs parallel with one of the Northwest’s busiest rail lines. And through a confluence of much larger global forces — including Warren Buffett, economic growth in Asia, and coal mined in Montana and Wyoming — those vacation snapshots could come to include a whole lot more trains.

Not everybody thinks the result will be too picturesque.

Read more: The Dirty Dance: Export Plan Puts North Idaho in the Middle of a New Coal Rush

(By Zach Hagadone, Boise Weekly)

Idaho Counties, Gas Drillers Reach Agreement on Legislation

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A group representing Idaho counties and a group representing companies interested in tapping natural gas in the state announced an agreement on Sunday on legislation they plan to introduce into the Idaho Legislature next month, the Associated Press reports. The Idaho Association of Counties and the Idaho Petroleum Council said the guidelines will allow counties some control over natural gas development, while natural gas wildcatters will have a clearer path to tapping fields; but a conservation group said the agreement appears to reduce local control over industries by allowing state lawmakers to create rules that counties and cities wouldn’t be able to exceed with their own ordinances. Click Gas Drillers, Idaho Counties Reach Agreement for the full story from Associated Press reporter Keith Ridler.

(By Betsy Russell, Eye on Boise, The Spokesman-Review)

Canadian Oil Pipeline Would Be Path to China

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National Energy Board panelists, back row, stand with Haisla First Nation Hereditary Chiefs during the opening day of hearings for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project in Kitamaat Village, British Columbia, on January 10. Several hundred people gathered for hearings on whether a pipeline should be laid from the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific Ocean (Associated Press photo).

Alternate route hits familiar obstacles

KITAMAAT VILLAGE, B.C. – The latest chapter in Canada’s quest to become a full-blown oil superpower unfolded this month in a village gym on the British Columbia coast.

Here, several hundred people gathered for hearings on whether a pipeline should be laid from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific in order to deliver oil to Asia, chiefly energy-hungry China. The stakes are particularly high for the village of Kitamaat, south of Kitimat, because the pipeline would terminate here and a port would be built to handle 220 tankers a year and 525,000 barrels of oil a day.

But the planned Northern Gateway Pipeline is just one aspect of an epic battle over Canada’s oil ambitions – a battle that already has a supporting role in the U.S. presidential election, and which will help to shape North America’s future energy relationship with China.

Read more: Canadian Oil Pipeline Would Be Path to China

(By Rob Gillies, Associated Press, The Spokesman-Review)

(Link provided by Tom Hansen)