Idaho & Montana Tar Sands Megaload Protests! Salmon 1-5-14 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photos)

On Saturday, January 4, the first Omega Morgan-hauled tar sands megaload to cross southern Idaho left Howe after 10 pm, despite earlier, conflicting reports that the convoy would not move that night.  Miscommunication slowed its launch for 45 minutes, as the Idaho State Police (ISP), Idaho Transportation Department (ITD), and Omega Morgan failed to inform the Butte County sheriff deputy and local law enforcement and first responders of the transport’s departure.  Locals decried the lack of notice, protecting the big rig from ‘evil’ protesters, while risking the death or property loss of citizens.  The megaload headed up Highway 28 over Gilmore Pass and through Leadore, to park about four or five miles before Salmon, almost to the 28 Club Restaurant, along the south side of Highway 28.

Occupying most of a large pull-out adjacent to the Lemhi L6 diversion and fish screen and ladder, next to the Lemhi River at the foot of the first bridge over it southeast of town, the megaload perched precariously close to the aquatic home of threatened Columbia Basin bull trout, Snake River Basin steelhead, and Snake River spring/summer Chinook salmon.  The public has spent millions of dollars to help restore these rare fish and their critical habitats in riparian areas that also host nesting and wintering bald eagles, golden eagles, sage grouse, and other imperiled species.

During the sunny Sunday of January 5, people gawked, took photos, and chatted with the two security guards, without protesters or real police or sheriffs in sight, at the big tourist event that even attracted Idaho Falls folks, who were in the area with their children for a weekend hockey tournament.  Apparently in Idaho, size matters, but so does climate change!  The first passage of megaloads through southern Idaho presented great opportunities for Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists to educate citizens and raise money for the anti-tar sands cause, by distributing brochures and information to onlookers and selling hot chocolate, coffee, donuts, and perhaps even T-shirts with a map of megaload stops. Continue reading →

Idaho and Montana Tar Sands Megaload Protests! Timmerman 12-30-13 (December 30 Wild Idaho Rising Tide photos)

On Monday, December 30, about 20 people gathered between 9 pm and 2 am at Timmerman Junction, to protest, document, and/or watch a megaload of tar sands equipment travel east from Cat Creek Summit, across south central Idaho, and eventually north through Montana and Alberta [1-6].  The first of three shipments moved by Portland area heavy hauler Omega Morgan since December 2 and over the next month, on a new route departing from the Port of Umatilla, Oregon, the 901,000-pound, 376-foot-long heat exchanger core of a wastewater evaporator is owned and designed by General Electric subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International.  Athabasca Oil Corporation will install these mining effluent recyclers in its Hangingstone steam assisted gravity drainage tar sands mining facility southwest of Fort McMurray, Alberta [7].  Protest organizers 350 Idaho, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), and allies extend our gratitude to Idaho Mountain Express reporter Terry Smith for his recent articles that have single-handedly, locally educated Wood River Valley residents about Alberta tar sands issues.

Most of the progressive participants in the Monday night demonstration hailed from the Wood River Valley towns of  Gannett, Bellevue, Hailey, Ketchum, and Sun Valley, within ten miles of Timmerman Junction, the intersection of east-west-trending U.S. Highway 20 and north-south thoroughfare Idaho Highway 75 in Idaho.  Some protesters arrived at the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) rest area meeting place, on the southwest side of the junction, after traveling 55 miles from Twin Falls or 125 miles from Boise.  At least three generations held protest signs and banners against the corporate, industrial onslaught that slowed beneath the intersection signal light at about 1:30 am on Tuesday morning, December 31.  During megaload passage, police closed both highways to regular traffic. Continue reading →

Idaho & Montana Tar Sands Megaload Protests! Marsing 12-28-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photos)

On Saturday evening, December 28, 2013, four women from Boise, Moscow, and Parma, Idaho, gathered with difficulty and courage in Marsing, Idaho, to protest a 450-ton, 376-foot-long component of new tar sands mining facilities, as it exploited Idahoans’ highways, bridges, and rights on its way to Alberta, Canada.  Outnumbered by more than 100 onlookers who seemed mostly supportive of the Omega Morgan-hauled transport of the General Electric subsidiary equipment, they stood in silent, sorrowful vigil, demonstrating their opposition with protest signs reading, for example, “End Big Oil Tyranny” and “Idaho Says No Dirty Energy” [1, 2].

Staged by 350 Idaho and Wild Idaho Rising Tide, the first ever southern Idaho transit and protest of controversial tar sands megaloads, relatively close to the Boise metropolitan area, attracted several regional, commercial and private media representatives, who interviewed and photographed participants [3, 4, 5].  For a third winter, the vigilant activists stood in defiance of the global impacts wrought by tar sands shipments that ultimately degrade public infrastructure, civil liberties, indigenous lives and ways, boreal ecosystems, and worldwide climate [6].  Except through public displays of dissent, they have found no recourse to the state and federal governments who permit, subsidize, and accept hefty lobbyist donations from the wealthiest corporations – the oil, gas, and coal companies – to profit from the largest and most destructive energy extraction project on Earth. Continue reading →