Weather has delayed an extra-long shipment that was scheduled to move from the Port of Lewiston across north central Idaho on U.S. Highway 12 late Thursday evening and this morning (Friday, December 21).
Snow was likely at Powell Thursday night near the Montana border, according to the National Weather Service.
No new date has been set to move the 163-foot-long rig carrying a generator skid, according to the Idaho Transportation Department.
(By The Lewiston Tribune)
Motorists may experience traffic delays as long as 15 minutes, as an extra-long rig makes its way across Idaho on U.S. Highway 12 tonight and Friday morning.
The 163-foot-long truck will carry a generator skid from the Port of Lewiston to the Montana border between 10 pm today (Thursday, December 20) and 5:30 am on Friday if weather permits, according to a news release from the Idaho Transportation Department.
The National Weather Service is predicting a wide range of weather on the route. Temperatures in Lewiston are expected to be 35 degrees with a 20 percent chance of rain. Snow is likely at Powell near the Montana border, with temperatures in the low 20s.
The shipment is 15 feet wide, 16 1/2 feet tall, and 242,800 pounds and will need two lanes of traffic to negotiate corners, according to the transportation department. It is also set to cause a delay for vehicles on U.S. Highway 95 near the Spalding bridge.
Many details about the cargo were not disclosed by the transportation department on Wednesday. A news release announcing the shipment was issued after the agency’s close of business.
(By The Lewiston Tribune)
KRFP Radio Free Moscow features an interview with Tim Hatten of the Palouse Prairie Foundation, between 15:29 and 6:09 of the Thursday, December 13, 2012, Evening Report, Palouse Prairie & U.S. 95. Tim describes this rare grassland ecosystem and Highway 95 realignment threats to its integrity.
Realignment, reroute, fix, or upgrade, whatever term you prefer, it looks as if a treacherous portion of U.S. Highway 95 is finally getting the attention it has needed for a long time.
The Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) has issued a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for its selection of a new route for Highway 95 between Thorn Creek Road and south Moscow. ITD has picked the E2 route to the east of Highway 95 on Paradise Ridge.
More than a decade ago, Idaho officials had planned to build a straighter and safer 6.5-mile stretch of the state’s major north-south road. They had proposed numerous options to the west and east of the curvy part and one that improved the existing section.
An alternative that rerouted the highway over parts of Paradise Ridge was then also favored by the state. Residents on the ridge and others objected, saying the road would have a disastrous effect on portions of Palouse prairie that manage to exist in patches on the ridge.
A lawsuit was filed in 2003 saying the state did not properly conduct a DEIS for the route. (Some folks even tried to save the beleaguered prairie by tying it to the giant Palouse earthworm, but the grassroots movement gained little traction.) Continue reading
…In other business, Lewiston Port Commissioners on Wednesday also discussed another possibility for hauling machinery or supplies to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota.
The port has already received an inquiry from a business that wants to barge supplies up the Columbia and Snake rivers and load them onto trucks at Lewiston for the last leg of the journey, Port Manager David Doeringsfeld said.
The port’s staff is drafting an ad to appear in North Dakota newspapers that would promote how the Port of Lewiston is less than 900 miles from the oil fields, Doeringsfeld said.
Haulers who want to send regular and oversized shipments through the port could be among the new customers the port generates through the promotion, Doeringsfeld said.
(Excerpt from Food Processing Facility for Multiple Ventures Proposed by Elaine Williams, The Lewiston Tribune)
KRFP Radio Free Moscow airs an interview with Al Poplawsky of the Paradise Ridge Defense Coalition, between 18:11 and 8:30 of the Monday, December 10, 2012, Evening Report, Paradise Ridge Defense Coalition, describing the many potential impacts to native Palouse Prairie habitat and wildlife, highway traveler safety, and area resident aesthetics of a Highway 95 eastern re-alignment south of Moscow, as proposed by a citizen-contested 2002 environmental assessment and a 2012 draft environment impact statement advanced by the Idaho Transportation Department.
KRFP recorded all except the first 15 minutes of the Tuesday, December 4, public scoping hearing for the environmental impact statement assessing a proposed new coal export facility at Cherry Point north of Bellingham. As one of up to six new planned West Coast terminals, it could increase sales of Powder River Basin coal from Montana and Wyoming to China and other Asian markets. At the meeting held in Spokane by the Washington Department of Ecology, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Whatcom County, most of the first 30 speakers reflected pro-coal objectives, because the Northwest Alliance for Jobs and Exports paid temporary workers to wait in line from 8 am until the start of the hearing and reserve the numbered cards that indicate the sequence of speakers. In Spokane Coal Train Hearing – Full – Part 1, KRFP Radio Free Moscow presents the first two-hour block of the three-hour hearing. It provides the rest of the recording, plus a few interviews done in the hall outside the hearing, in Spokane Coal Train Hearing – Full – Part 2.
Listen to KRFP Radio Free Moscow between 36:26 and 34:21 of the Friday, December 7, 2012, Evening Report, U.S. 95 East Route + Coal Hearing, for information released to the Moscow-Pullman Daily News about the Idaho Transportation Department’s preferred alternative for Highway 95 re-alignment south of Moscow, through some of the last remaining native habitat of the Palouse Prairie.
The Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) and Federal Highway Administration (FHA) have approved a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) favoring an eastern realignment of U.S. Highway 95 from Thorn Creek Road to Moscow and will soon enter a public comment process.
ITD project manager Ken Helm said the impact statement was signed November 26 and will likely be published later this month or early January.
The transportation department identified the dangerous, curvy stretch of highway for realignment more than ten years ago. Since then, there have been 220 accidents along the 6.5 mile stretch, resulting in 138 injuries and six deaths.
The preferred realignment alternative starts at Thorn Creek and shifts about 2,000 feet east at the top of Reisenauer Hill and rejoins the existing highway at the Primeland Cooperative grain elevators at the southern end of Moscow. Continue reading
Concerns over proposed rail shipments of coal through Montana, Idaho’s panhandle, and Washington state before being shipped to China drew more than 800 people on Tuesday to a public hearing at Spokane’s County Fairgrounds.
Boise Weekly first told you in February about how some of the globe’s biggest mining companies want to ship hundreds of millions of tons of coal through the northernmost sections of the United States.
This morning’s Coeur d’Alene Press reports that opponents of the shipments outnumbered supporters on Tuesday. Opponents waved signs that said, “Check the Facts,” and wore T-shirts that said, “Coal is a dirty, old source of energy, and its time has passed.”
Boise Weekly reported on similar protests on November 17, when members of Moscow-based Wild Idaho Rising Tide joined Occupy Spokane to rally in the Idaho panhandle town of Sandpoint, where many of the shipments would roll through.
Read more: Coal Shipment Opponents: ‘They’re the Dirtiest, Most Dangerous Trains’
(By George Prentice, Boise Weekly)
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 