The General Electric subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International evaporator core at the Port of Wilma on Friday, November 8, prepared for Omega Morgan transport to the Athabasca Oil Corporation’s Hangingstone in situ Alberta tar sands mining operations southwest of Fort McMurray (Rob Briggs photo)

On Friday, November 8, the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) issued a permit for the heaviest and longest megaload of tar sands extraction equipment to recently traverse U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 in Idaho and degrade Idahoans’ roads and rights on Sunday and Monday nights, November 10 and 11, between 10 pm to 6 am [1].  Like the controversial oversize evaporator that met four nights of fierce resistance from Nez Perce, Idle No More, Wild Idaho Rising Tide, and allied activists in early August, this core of a similar shipment that also arrived at the Port of Wilma on July 22 weighs up to 644,000 pounds [2].  But unlike that 255-foot-long transport, this behemoth stretches 297 feet long.  Its 16-foot width crowds out other traffic on mostly two-lane Highway 95, while its 15.9-foot height barely clears standard 16-foot-tall overpasses along the Idaho route.  Hillsboro, Oregon-based Omega Morgan will haul the partial evaporator, designed by General Electric subsidiary Resources Conservation Company International (RCCI) of Bellevue, Washington, and manufactured in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, on a specialized trailer conveyed by push and pull trucks.  Accompanied by a convoy of pilot cars, flaggers, and likely police vehicles, the inexplicably divisible and unstranded evaporator will travel from the Port of Wilma in Clarkston, Washington, on Idaho Highway 128 to Lewiston, north on U.S. 95 to Coeur d’Alene, and then east on Interstate 90 to the Montana border, over the course of two nights.  En route to the Hangingstone steam assisted gravity drainage tar sands mining operations of Athabasca Oil Corporation, southwest of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the corporate parade must safely pull over at previously identified locations in Idaho, to clear traffic “delayed” (fully stopped) no longer than 15 minutes under state laws. Continue reading →

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!

Dear Comrades,

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) offers its humble gratitude for all of the courageous Nez Perce tribal members and regional supporters who so successfully blockaded and scuttled the Omega Morgan plan to move a 644,000-pound evaporator to Alberta tar sands operations through the wild rivers, forests, and canyons of the Nez Perce homeland.  After crossing Idaho over four nights and meeting the most passionate resistance ever witnessed by such an industrial convoy, the megaload reached Highway 12 milepost 4, just over Lolo Pass in Montana, at 5:30 am on Friday morning, August 8.  Ideally, the Idaho Rivers United/Nez Perce injunction requested on Thursday may take effect this week for the Lochsa-Clearwater wild and scenic river corridor in Idaho.  We have heard that another eight loads are now headed down the Washington coast toward the Port of Wilma, so we are calling on all West Coast/Columbia River activists to report their observations of these shipments.

According to the Montana Department of Transportation and its issued megaload permit, the module cannot travel in the state on Fridays or Saturdays and will move from its current location to the Bonner truck stop on Monday night, August 12.  Northern Rockies Rising Tide (NRRT), No Shipments Network, All Against the Haul, and other anti-megaload activists sent an alert and are organizing a Monday night solidarity protest.  They coordinated an action planning meeting on Saturday afternoon and are asking that, if you can help with organizing or participating in the Monday action, please contact NRRT as soon as possible by email at northernrockiesrisingtide@gmail.com or through the phone number posted in the contact section of the NRRT website.

Thanks to everyone in Idaho and Montana for your ongoing climate, tar sands, and indigenous rights activism.  We urge brave, fellow activists in Montana to rise up against this escalating Big Oil invasion.  WIRT will send you megaload issue updates as timely as possible from the road.

Wild Idaho Rising Tide

P.O. Box 9817, Moscow, Idaho 83843

WildIdahoRisingTide.org & on facebook and Twitter

208-301-8039

Over the July 20-21 weekend, while climate activists from around the continent concluded the Rising Tide Continental Gathering at a remote Utah desert encampment, regional allies observed gigantic, spaceship-like megaloads traveling by barge up the Columbia and Snake rivers [1].  Manufactured for destructive Alberta tar sands extraction, weighing more than 600,000 pounds and measuring up to 255 feet long, 23 feet tall, and 21 feet wide on specialized trailers, two of at least ten large, cylindrical, pressure vessels arrived and offloaded at the Port of Wilma, Washington, near Lewiston, Idaho, late on Monday afternoon, July 22.  Heavy-haul company Omega Morgan has submitted a revised transportation plan seeking Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) permits for moving these wastewater evaporators across Idaho to Montana on U.S. Highway 12 [2].

But in an early February ruling in response to an Idaho Rivers United lawsuit argued by Advocates for the West, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill of Boise upheld Forest Service (USFS) authority to review state approval of megaload shipments that would traverse the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest and the Lochsa/Middle Fork of the Clearwater Wild and Scenic River corridors [3].  In his June 17, 2013, letter to ITD, Forest Supervisor Rick Brazell suggested interim megaload definitions and USFS approval criteria: Oversized loads should not require traffic to be fully stopped, the roadway or adjacent vegetation to be physically modified, or take longer than 12 hours to cross forest/river lands [4]. Continue reading →