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 →

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 →

[Update: Adverse weather conditions caused ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil and its hauler Mammoet to postpone the two shipments scheduled to leave the Port of Lewiston on Tuesday, January 24.  If the climate that they disrupt does not again (hopefully) impede their movement, an 80,000-pound and 240,000-pound megaload will travel north on Highway 95 after 8 pm on Wednesday, January 25.  Please see the following, revised, previously posted action alert and join Wild Idaho Rising Tide activists in monitoring and protesting these Alberta tar sands processing modules.] Continue reading →

At 935,000 combined pounds, the three Alberta tar sands transports scheduled to damage Highway 95 and Moscow streets on Thursday, January 12, build the heaviest Imperial Oil convoy ever.  If the vestiges of a cool climate and winter weather do not scuttle another reinforcing trip to the world’s biggest (232-square-mile) mine, three 24-feet wide, 15-feet high shipments respectively weighing 135,000, 375,000, and 425,000 pounds and measuring 110, 195, and 215 feet long could leave the Port of Lewiston after 8 pm.  All of the transports will travel separately except through Moscow, as the smaller module on a conventional trailer moves toward Lookout Pass and the two megaloads on hydraulic trailers lumber toward a parking/staging area near Worley.  Idaho state troopers, pilot vehicle drivers, flaggers, and Moscow city police, all paid by the hauler Mammoet, will guard and escort this tar sands equipment instead of the citizen safety, access, and convenience we should all demand on our own roads. Continue reading →

[Update: Last night, on Tuesday, January 10, Imperial Oil and its hauler Mammoet moved only one of its three tar sands modules up Highway 95, admitting that “two shipments were not able to leave the Port of Lewiston.” Moscow police informed protesters of this postponement after the first load traversed our city streets.  Tonight, Big Oil plans to pummel Idaho roads with the heaviest megaload yet, a 425,000-pound, 215-feet-long climate killer, and with a 60,000-pound, two-lane (24-feet) wide, rolling roadblock.  Please do your part to monitor and protest this deadly procession on Wednesday, January 11, or forever regret your complicity in global devastation.  Join Moscow activists and Wild Idaho Rising Tide members who will supply protest signs, banners, and chants and monitoring partners and guidance.  Bring your friends, family, outrage, strong voice, and recording equipment.  Monitors are meeting near Moscow City Hall, at the corner of Second and Washington streets, at 7:30 pm and after the demonstration.  Protesters are converging at the same location between 9:30 and 10 pm.  Please see the prior announcement for further information and check the ExxonMobil website at http://www.kearltransport.com/ for other last-minute, purportedly weather-induced changes.] Continue reading →

On Wednesday, January 4, in defiance of reason and the public will and in devious resolve to plunder our meager state infrastructure, freshwater ecosystems, and the rapidly fading viability of life under carbon-packed skies, ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil is moving the most massive combined weight of megaloads to ever crush Idaho roads and bridges (and you are the lucky taxpayer who finances its damages AND subsidizes its profits!).  As harbingers of the excessive industrial forces that we have allowed to increasingly proliferate around our planet, the three modules passing through the Palouse toward Alberta tar sands mining operations will respectively (but not respectfully) weigh 200,000, 330,000, and 375,000 pounds and will crowd curves with their 90, 175, and 200 foot lengths and 15 foot heights.  If you have not yet observed or raged against these colossal machines, Highway 95 and Moscow streets are now calling your name! Continue reading →

As North America turns back toward the sun with the Winter Solstice at 9:30 pm on Wednesday, December 21, concerned citizens and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists turn our sights away from the dirty oil, coal, and gas we collectively dig from the ground toward the abundant energy that fills our skies with light, wind, and residual carbon.  Please join us for a mass exercise of our First Amendment rights to re-envision and re-empower our material and political lives as we confront the corporate power, government complicity, and industrial forces that threaten life on our home planet.

The tar sands are America’s dirty secret and the reason that Canada has abandoned the Kyoto Protocol.  We consume 97 percent of the “oil” produced by assembled megaloads and accompanying energy- and water-intensive processes amidst 250 square miles of a denuded First Nations boreal forest wetland.  Idaho may be the first sacrifice zone of Big Oil expanding transportation to and from the tar sands to world energy markets.  Its wildness should make it the weakest link: Rise up, tough Idahoans, or watch your forests burn! Continue reading →

While America sleeps, the mechanisms of planetary demise rumble through our streets toward the dirty depths of our oil addiction hell.  As most of the nation remains fixated on the Keystone XL and other tar sands pipelines, the machinery that processes the low-grade Alberta fuel that fills those conduits rolls closer to construction.  Some brave and abandoned Northwesterners are physically confronting ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil’s tar sands equipment as it degrades their roads and rights on the way to devastating whole watersheds and cultures. Continue reading →