Between 11:01 and 7:15 of the Tuesday, October 15, KRFP Radio Free Moscow Evening Report, Moscow Megaload Return, Leigh Robartes describes the first tar sands megaloads to traverse Highway 95 and Moscow in over a year and a half and associated monitoring, protesting, and litigating efforts.
With a mid-afternoon media release, the Idaho Transportation Department confirmed that likely Alberta tar sands equipment shipments with unknown ultimate destinations will travel through the Highway 12 sacrifice zone: northbound on U.S. Highway 95 between Lewiston and Coeur d’Alene and eastbound on Interstate 90, starting on Tuesday night, October 15. Omega Morgan is hauling four sump sections in two pairs from the Port of Wilma in Clarkston, Washington, embarking on Idaho Highway 128 at 9:30 pm and 10:30 pm, and reaching the Idaho/Montana state line at 5 am and 6 am on Wednesday morning. Each oversized cylinder measures over 20 feet wide, 15 feet tall, 75 feet long, and weighs under 80,000 pounds. Due to the width of these modules, three flagging teams, two pilot vehicles, and portable signs will travel with each pair of transports that cannot legally delay other vehicles for more than 15 minutes and must pull over to let such traffic pass. State and city officials have advised that these ‘mini-megaloads’ are not pieces of the 21-foot-wide, 255-foot-long, 644,000-pound evaporator currently stranded at the Port of Wilma, with plans to cross U.S. Highway 12 scuttled by Nez Perce and allied protests and federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill’s preliminary injunction. Resources Conservation Company International (RCCI) has filed an appeal of this decision with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) members and regional activists are coordinating local, anti-megaload actions in downtown Moscow starting at 8:30 pm, to confront Big Oil’s return to Moscow streets and Highway 95 in north central Idaho. We will continue to defend the community of life and climate of Earth with our full participation tonight, as we together raise our voices and impose our bodies against General Electric, RCCI, and Omega Morgan. The ecological, human, and global climate consequences of their dirty energy mining degradation of the boreal forests and peat bogs in First Nations homelands are too dire to not act against this transportation venture. We encourage everyone to bring your friends, family, signs, banners, and musical instruments, and if so moved, practice civil disobedience and initiate blockades to counter corporate oppression and bolster our regional resistance. Please join WIRT activists at the corner of Second and Washington streets, near Moscow City Hall, at 8:30 pm and beyond, to monitor the megaloads south of Moscow and/or to replace and create megaload protest signs lost on Highway 12, before convoys enter Moscow at approximately 10:30 pm. We heartily welcome your spontaneous expressions of anti-tar sands passion and force on every Northwest/Northern Rockies megaload route!
The transportation company Omega Morgan will move oversized loads that could cause traffic delays tonight on U.S. Highway 95.
The four shipments, known as sump sections, are 20.1 feet wide, 15.6 feet tall, 75 feet long, and weigh less than 80,000 pounds. They are not the 21-foot-wide, 255-foot-long, 644,000-pound water evaporator megaloads planned for U.S. Highway 12, which spawned protests and a preliminary injunction issued by federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill.
The shipments will move in pairs from the Port of Wilma. The first pair is scheduled to embark on its journey to Coeur d’Alene and the east-bound portion of Interstate 90 at 9:30 pm and be followed by the second pair at 10:30 pm. They are anticipated to reach the Idaho/Montana state line at 5 am and 6 am Wednesday.
According to a news release from the Idaho Transportation Department (Equipment Shipments Will Travel on U.S. 95, Interstate 90 Starting Tonight), flagging teams will travel with the shipments, and traffic could be delayed up to 15 minutes at a time.
In regards to the megaloads, Resources Conservation Company International has filed an appeal to Winmill’s injunction on the Highway 12 shipments to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
(By The Lewiston Tribune)
Barging in Alberta tar sands facilities components, despite court/street resistance, dissembling them, and sneaking them up Highway 95 are apparently becoming standard, default, corporate operating procedure. General Electric subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International (RCCI) has been hiding and taking apart such megaloads in a leased Port of Wilma warehouse. Omega Morgan, Morgan Machinery, and their state police and transportation department facilitators slipped four legal weight “sump sections” up Highway 95 and through Moscow on the night of October 15-16. Adam Rush of the Idaho Transportation Department said that these smaller, lighter transports are “different from the piece of equipment that is still at the Port of Wilma,” probably only because they were no longer attached to it.
No one blockaded the first two suddenly apparent pieces of the controversial RCCI evaporator that passed the too-familiar Third and Washington Street protest haunt in downtown Moscow at 11 pm on Tuesday. The vertical cylinders appeared to be the larger-diameter, outer layers of the second, plastic-wrapped evaporator that arrived at the port on July 22 with the similar megaload that encountered early-August Nez Perce and allied resistance on Highway 12. Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists noticed Moscow city police looking out their nearby back door several times and even walking across the street from them, while city, county, and state police vehicles drove by numerous times, all watching and perhaps waiting for protesters to leave, after the first two RCCI loads traversed the city. At 2 am, haulers snuck the last pair of megaloads past Moscow area residents, after they dispersed at 1:30 am.
Like permitting protocol for the 33 overlegal ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands processing components that also sought Highway 12 passage but were court-blocked and not as secretly down-sized by mostly out-of-state workers to approximately 70 half-height Highway 95 modules during 2011-12, RCCI also certified to the Idaho Transportation Department that it could not reduce the size of its steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) mining evaporators and thus must transport them through the overpass-free Nez Perce Reservation and wild public lands and rivers around Highway 12. It revealed its lies when Omega Morgan and Morgan Machinery moved pieces of the court-stranded evaporator through Moscow on Tuesday evening, October 15. Heavy hauler Mammoet similarly tried to sneak Imperial Oil behemoths weighing up to 415,000 pounds past Moscow area protesters and monitors.
Are the widths of the remaining parts of the huge second evaporator, seen outside the port warehouse on October 14 and 15, narrow enough to not require oversize permits and public notice and thus traverse Highways 95 or 12 unnoticed? Their schematics originally submitted to the Idaho Transportation Department imply otherwise. Expect resistance soon to more oversize loads that will compromise Highway 95 night-time safety, indigenous lands, waters, and people in Alberta, and the global climate! Moscow and Wild Idaho Rising Tide are fortunate to exercise our responsibility as gatekeepers to Alberta tar sands hell! People across the Northwest should obstruct every such route on rivers and roads leading north!
No Tar Sands Megaloads Anywhere! (October 15 Wild Idaho Rising Tide)
Four Oversized Loads to Travel Tonight on U.S. Highway 95 (October 15 Lewiston Tribune)
Megaloads Return to Moscow Streets Tonight (October 15 KRFP Evening Report)
General Electric Apparently Splitting Stranded Tar Sands Evaporator to Send Parts up U.S. 95 (October 16 KRFP Evening Report)
Mini-Megaloads Head for Montana via U.S. Highway 95 (October 16 Lewiston Tribune)
Megaloads Draw Protesters (October 17 Moscow-Pullman Daily News)
WIRT Scouting the Port of Wilma 10-20-13 (October 20 Wild Idaho Rising Tide video)
Omega Morgan/Morgan Machinery Highway 95 Sump Section Superload Applications & Traffic Plan 10-15-13 (Idaho Transportation Department)
Evaporator at the Port of Wilma 10-14-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)
Evaporator at the Port of Wilma 1 pm 10-15-13 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photo)
During the last two Idaho legislative sessions, a majority of our state senators and representatives succumbed to the mercenary ambitions of the oil and natural gas industry and the state of Idaho. They passed state laws, rules, and regulations allowing hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” that pollutes surface and ground water, sanctioning associated waste injection wells that leak or re-use water wells, permitting seismic testing and gas flaring that jeopardize geologic stability and air quality, granting corporate hegemony over local jurisdictions that undermines democratic oversight of oil and gas facilities, and consenting to drilling on state lands and near or under rivers, wetlands, and wildlife refuges that sustain drinking water, agriculture, and native species [1, 2].
Despite ongoing outcry from thousands of citizens and diligent input from scientists, attorneys, elected officials, and conservation organizations, our delegates have negligently accommodated oil and gas exploration, production, and transportation in Idaho, especially where the state owns the subsurface mineral rights, at the likely expense of their constituents’ health, safety, livelihoods, and self-governance. In the wake of increasingly erratic weather and horrific oil and gas spills in the flooded South Platte River bottomlands of Colorado, honest, hard-working Idahoans dread the impacts of similar probable scenarios on their families and communities, homes and businesses, and resources and recreation in the Payette River floodplains, where drilling resumed this summer, and in the wild, downstream Snake River canyons [3, 4]. Continue reading
Activists, friends, and supporters,
RISING TIDE/CLIMATE MOVEMENT
Leaked Stratfor PowerPoint Shows Corporation’s Fear of Activist Campaigns (August 3 Popular Resistance)
A Stratfor document released by Wikileaks reveals that big business interests take activists and their impacts seriously. It advocates dividing and conquering various groups in four categories, who are working to stop the extraction, development, and transportation of tar sands. “Pull opportunists and realists into compromised positions, convince idealists they have the facts wrong, and isolate the most dangerous group, the radicals.” Please write a letter of support for Jeremy Hammond, who has pled guilty to the Stratfor hack and is currently collecting such letters to ask the judge for a sentence of only time served.
Northwest Fossil Fuels: Exports and Resistance from Oregon to Alaska (September 26 Rising Tide)
Across the Cascadia region, from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Coast and from northern California to south central Alaska, huge private corporations are developing energy infrastructure that imposes dangerous risks and associated impacts in the short-term and compromised functionality and management in the mid- and long-term. Their antiquated analyses consider profit maximization over the real concerns of residents and the interdependence of all life that transcends political boundaries. People throughout Cascadia need to exercise their rights to free, prior, and informed consent of energy projects affecting the natural world upon which present and future generations depend.
Rising Tide activists Adam from Seattle, David from Portland, Helen from Moscow, and Maryam from Vancouver, B.C. presented an insightful panel discussion and community forum on these topics on Thursday evening, September 26, at the University Temple United Methodist Church in the University District of Seattle. After long journeys that day, we talked about Northwest fossil fuel corridors and transportation projects, including megaload routes, from North Dakota to Washington and from Oregon to Alaska. Our discussions about regional export of Alberta tar sands, Bakken shale oil, and Powder River Basin coal, and imports of tar sands mining equipment met with thoughtful concluding questions and extended post-forum conversations with 40 audience members. Ideas for similar educational events arose later that weekend among Rising Tide groups who met near Bellingham.
Rising Tide Regional Strategy Summit (September 27-29 Rising Tide)
Two weeks ago, some of the 29 Rising Tide activists who participated in a weekend strategy summit at a Bellingham area farm touched coastal waters and joined the Lummi Tribe totem pole blessing ceremony at Cherry Point, Washington, near the site of the proposed Gateway Pacific coal export terminal. (Please see the following Totem Pole Journey links and listen to the Climate Justice Forum radio program on KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday evening, to hear parts of the hour-long recorded ceremony.) After the festivities on Friday evening, an Occupy Spokane activist spoke at the strategy summit and, after returning home, committed to restarting Spokane Rising Tide. The summit exceeded most of our expectations, bringing together experienced and emerging Rising Tide groups and key organizers from Vancouver/Coast Salish Territories, B.C., Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, and Moscow, to strengthen our regional network and increase our communication and coordination.
(excerpted)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Gives Its Hacktivists the Same Name as Actual Activist Group (September 26 Wired)
Riding the pop culture wave of the television show Agents of SHIELD with Rising Tide North America
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Meet Its Real-Life, Climate-Defending, Disney-Dissenting Villains (October 1 Yes!)
More misguided television/internet hype: strange associations for remote climate activists who consider even big cities bizarre
Timeline of the Climate Movement: How Direct Action Took Center Stage (October 2 Yes!)
“There’s a clear trajectory, too: away from ‘Big Green’ groups, who placed their hopes in electoral politics, and toward creative, high-stakes actions in the communities that have the most to lose. Increasingly, direct action is seen not as a fringe tactic but as the next logical step when other avenues fail. ‘When people see each other confronting power, their fear goes away…People are willing to take risks when they know their community has their back.’” The interactive, graphic timeline embedded in this article could benefit from more extensive, detailed data that maps on-the-ground campaigns across the continent over the last decade.
Building the Environmental Movement Today: A Debate (October 3 Climate and Capitalism)
Sasha Ross’ critique of Chris Williams’ article Strategy and Tactics in the Environmental Movement, followed by Chris Williams’ retort
The Climate Movement’s Pipeline Preoccupation (October 8 Earth Island Journal)
Arielle, David, Kirby, and Maryam of our Rising Tide North America network penned this article about next steps for the climate movement, during and after the Keystone XL pipeline campaigns.
Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse (April 12-14 Counterpunch)
The Grassroots Battle Against Big Oil (October 28 The Nation)
Tar Sands Blockade’s robust climate movement-building, grassroots resistance to fossil fuels deep in the belly of the Texas beast made the cover of The Nation magazine! In blockaders’ own words: “From the Winnsboro tree blockade to Nacogdoches and Houston, from eminent domain abuse to climate justice, writer Wen Stephenson with The Nation extensively interviews several blockaders and our local allies, like the Austin Heights Baptist Church and Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service, in one of the most in-depth profiles ever written about Tar Sands Blockade.” Continue reading
Autumn larch along the Lochsa River (Borg Hendrickson photo)
Federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill denied a request by General Electric and the U.S. Forest Service to lift his injunction barring megaloads from U.S. Highway 12 (Winmill Reconsideration Denial 10-10-13).
The corporation, through its subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International (RCCI), and the agency had asked the judge to reconsider his September 12 preliminary injunction against the massively oversized loads.
“The Court cannot find that RCCI has made a strong showing that it will prevail on appeal. Moreover, any likely damages are monetary in nature and not irreparable. Perhaps most importantly, staying the injunction will cause the very harm plaintiffs complain about in this lawsuit, harm the Court has found would be irreparable,” he wrote.
The company is expected to appeal his September 12 ruling to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland or Seattle.
(By The Lewiston Tribune, with revisions)
Climate defenders,
UPCOMING EVENTS
October 9: ITD to Hold Public Meetings Statewide Starting October 7 on 129,000-Pound Truck Legislation (Idaho Transportation Department)
Comment and participate in the Idaho Transportation Department’s (ITD) statewide public meetings on its four proposed administrative rules governing existing and additional 129,000-pound truck routes and implementing Idaho Senate Bills 1064 and 1117 and House Bill 322, all passed in 2013. Attend 4 to 7 pm meetings with hourly ITD staff presentations and give verbal or written testimony in Idaho Falls and Pocatello on October 7, in Coeur d’Alene and Lewiston on October 9, in Twin Falls on October 16, and in Boise on October 17. Email your comments on the rules to comments@itd.idaho.gov by 5 pm on October 24.
October 10: Weekly WIRT Potluck/Meeting (Wild Idaho Rising Tide)
The climate justice movement in Idaho depends on your activism: participate in planning actions and events, educating our cohorts and communities, reaching out through various media, and challenging energy extraction and transportation corporations. Please bring food and/or beverages to share, and contribute your ideas and energies toward our clean energy future every Thursday at 7 pm at the Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) Activist House in Moscow.
October 10: The Whole Story of Climate (Friends of the Moscow Library)
Local library supporters have invited WIRT members to their annual meeting, to hear Washington State University geologist E. Kirsten Peters talk about her book, The Whole Story of Climate. Her lecture will occur at 7 pm on Thursday, October 10, at the 1912 Center, 412 East Third Street in Moscow. Friends of the Moscow Library are offering this program, discussion, and refreshments to everyone free of charge: they welcome all to attend.
October 11: Flush the TPP Spokane (Chris Nerison, Spokane)
This Friday, October 11, at 6:30 pm, learn about the Trans Pacific Partnership international agreement, which could bolster dirty energy infrastructure imports and fossil fuel exports. View a presentation by Kristen Beifus of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition at the Liberty Park United Methodist Church, 1526 East 11th Avenue in Spokane. Call WIRT at 208-301-8039 for Palouse carpool coordination.
October 16: Blue Skies Campaign Fundraiser and Action Report-Back (Blue Skies Campaign)
The Missoula-based Blue Skies Campaign will hold a fundraiser on Wednesday, October 16, from 7 to 9 pm at Ten Spoon Windery, 4175 Rattlesnake Drive in Missoula, to help cover fines incurred from their rail line occupation in Helena during the September Showdown Against Coal Exports on the 16th. In one of the boldest acts of climate-related civil disobedience in Montana, 14 people walked and briefly sat beyond a “No Trespassing” sign between two main coal export train tracks, and received citations and fines of up to $300 each. Please RSVP through the following link, and join this event that will feature a report-back on the highly successful action and a preview of upcoming initiatives against coal exports. You can also donate online or mail your check written to Blue Skies Campaign to: Blue Skies Campaign, c/o Nick Engelfried, 321 South First Street West #3, Missoula, Montana 59801.
October 16: Climate Workgroup Hearing in Spokane (Climate Solutions and others)
On October 16 between 5 and 7 pm, in the Music Building Auditorium Room 110 on the Spokane Falls Community College campus, 3410 West Fort George Wright Drive in Spokane, Governor Inslee and Washington state legislators from the Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup (CLEW) will be holding a public hearing for open discussions about climate policy actions.
October 19: Global Frackdown 2 (Food and Water Watch, WIRT, and allies)
As Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction and WIRT design Boise/southern Idaho demonstrations on the frontlines of first fracking in our state, please plan to join us on Saturday, October 19, for the second Global Frackdown in Idaho, announced soon. Show your solidarity with communities around the world affected by fracking, and help us ban fracking in Idaho before it happens, if drillers have not already fracked the wilderness state!
Global Frackdown2 on facebook
Global Frackdown 2 Calls for a Worldwide Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing (October 7 EcoWatch)
Fundraising for Anti-Coal/Megaload Activists (Wild Idaho Rising Tide)
WIRT is seeking contributions for allied activists who defended treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, and the air, water, and lands of our region and climate from the infrastructure incursions of coal export and tar sands import last summer. During the WIRT-sponsored, well-attended, sign-waving rally, Fearless Summer Coal Export Sacrifice Zone Uprising, on June 27 in Spokane, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad patrols cited Tony Dellwo and ‘Ziggy’ with second degree criminal trespass, when the Occupy Spokane activists walked toward a downtown BNSF railroad bridge with a suspiciously temporarily stopped, loaded, coal export train, to obtain higher traffic visibility for their protest signs. Trespass charges for both defendants will be dropped after they pay fines and complete the terms of their agreements. Ziggy served eight hours of community service with Backbone Campaign’s annual Localize This! activist training camp, and Tony is diligently fulfilling his one-year probation. WIRT requests your help with their combined $125 fines due in October.
In passionate displays of tribal sovereignty and solidarity with other indigenous communities opposing tar sands exploitation, Nimiipuu tribal leaders and members and allied activists valiantly blockaded and delayed a tar sands mining evaporator and convoy at the reservation boundary and throughout the wild and scenic river corridor along Highway 12 on August 5 to 8. On September 20, Nez Perce Tribal Court arraigned most of the 28 protesters arrested by tribal police and charged up to $500 each for bail, imposing public nuisance infractions (unlawfully obstructing movement on a public highway). If convicted, eight accused Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee members may be forced by the tribe’s constitution to forfeit their posts for three years. Nimiipuu activists insist that the tribal court drop their charges, in consideration of pertinent tribal and federal laws, resolutions, and court orders rejecting Highway 12 megaloads. Although WIRT and allies recently raised over $1200 at a benefit concert, we ask that you join us in honoring such courageous, nonviolent, civil disobedience with your contributions that help cover fines and legal fees. Please donate whatever you can, noting intended Nez Perce or Spokane recipients, online or by check to Wild Idaho Rising Tide at the enclosed address, so that indigenous and climate activists can participate in resistance to coal and oil company onslaughts, regardless of their financial situation. Continue reading
Eastern Washington and northern Idaho activists are gathering in Spokane at noon on Tuesday, October 1, to carpool, coordinate, and participate in a public protest and scoping hearing in Pasco, Washington, about the Millennium Bulk Terminals proposal for coal export facilities in Longview, Washington. The Tri-Cities area, where a unit train derailed and 31 of its cars spilled six million pounds of coal on July 2, 2012, could experience up to 18 more coal trains rolling through these communities every day. The Longview coal port and accompanying train traffic would threaten the human, environmental, and climate health as well as the public safety and economic vitality of the region.
Do not miss your only other inland Northwest opportunity, after the September 25 Spokane rally and hearing, to speak out against coal exports from Longview! Please get an online lottery ticket to testify or share, wear red in opposition to coal, bring your friends, family, and protest signs, and voice your concerns on Tuesday about the broad coal export impacts that county, state, and federal agencies should consider in an upcoming draft environmental impact statement. The Pasco protest commences at 3 pm outside and before the doors to The Trac Center at 6600 Burden Boulevard open at 4 pm, with proposal information displays available until 8 pm. Citizens can offer oral comments between 5 and 8 pm either privately or publicly. Call 509-879-7470 or 208-301-8039 for carpool arrangements with Occupy Spokane, Wild Idaho Rising Tide, and other regional coal export resisters. For further issue and comment process information, see: Continue reading
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 