MOSCOW – Amid a police presence of nearly 30 officers, an estimated 200 demonstrators lined both sides of Washington Street here just after midnight Thursday as an Imperial Oil/Exxon Mobil megaload slipped through the gauntlet with ease.
Police Chief David Duke reported no arrests. “We had four that were warned, but they complied.”
Last week, six demonstrators were arrested and jailed after a megaload was forced to a stop. Continue reading
UPDATED: Saturday, August 27, 5:00 pm Idaho State Police told Citydesk that two more mega-load protesters were arrested Saturday morning in Coeur d’Alene. That brings to eight the number of persons taken into custody, expressing their displeasure of the oversized rigs heading for the Kearl Oil Sands Project in Alberta, Canada.
ORIGINAL POST: Friday, August 26 Six people were arrested early today, protesting mega-loads as the huge rigs rolled through their Latah County community. The six, members of Wild Idaho Rising Tide, took part in a larger protest which saw several people lie down in the middle of Washington Street in Moscow, as scaled-down ExxonMobil mega-loads rolled on Highway 95 toward Coeur d’Alene before heading east on I-90 and north to the Kearl Oil Sands Project in Alberta, Canada.
Read more: Update: More Mega-Load Protesters Arrested
(By George Prentice, Boise Weekly)
Keystone XL pipeline sit-in protest, Moscow, Idaho style, as an ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands megaload rolls though town on August 25-26, 2011: Thanks, Brett! (Moscow-Pullman Daily News photo)
Moscow, Idaho, crowds expand around sitting and standing Wild Idaho Rising Tide protesters who stopped an ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands shipment on August 25-26, 2011 (Tom Hansen photo).
About 150 people gather around Wild Idaho Rising Tide protesters during their August 25-26, 2011, demonstration of peaceful civil disobedience against ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tars sands transports permitted by the Idaho Transportation Department through Moscow, Idaho (Tom Hansen photo).
An Imperial Oil megaload passes under the highway sign at the split between U.S. Highway 95 and U.S. Highway 12. The 24-foot-wide, 14-foot-tall, and 208-foot-long oversized load departed Lewiston Thursday night on its way to Moscow and beyond to Alberta, Canada (The Lewiston Tribune/Kyle Mills photo).
(Editor’s Note: Ms. Wiliams wrote this story off-site with a phone interview, before the largest Moscow anti-tar sands megaload protest erupted later that evening.)
The stars in a summer sky were among the only witnesses to the departure of the first Imperial Oil megaload to go through Moscow.
The load left the Port of Lewiston at 10:05 p.m. Thursday, following a couple of honks that signaled the start of its journey.
Wild Idaho Rising Tide, an anti-megaload group, had previously announced plans to watch it leave Lewiston and protest it in Moscow. Continue reading
Some of ExxonMobil's modules sit along the Clearwater River at the Port of Lewiston, Idaho, in early February 2011 (Missoulian/Linda Thompson photo).
More king-size loads of oil field equipment are headed to the Kearl tar sands of Alberta this weekend, and the route comes through Missoula on Interstate 90.
The Idaho Transportation Department has given Exxon Mobil/Imperial Oil the green light for two oversized loads to leave the Port of Lewiston and use U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 to enter into Montana over Lookout Pass. Idaho state troopers will escort the loads on the 175-mile trip to the stateline.
Smaller than the megaloads that used U.S. Highway 12 through Idaho and into Montana, the loads traveling this weekend are 17.5 feet wide, 14 feet tall, and 76 feet long.
One load will be leaving at 10 p.m. Saturday. The other will depart at the same time Sunday.
While the oil company prepared its equipment for travel on Friday, Idaho activists geared up to protest the trucks.
Read more: Smaller Imperial Oil Shipments Set for Transport this Weekend
(By Alyse Backus, intern reporter, The Missoulian, Ravalli Republic)
Imperial Oil has five days starting Friday to get a megaload and another smaller, oversized shipment from the Port of Lewiston to Idaho’s border via the Palouse.
The Idaho Transportation Department reissued the permits Wednesday for the moves, said Adam Rush, a spokesman for the agency in Boise.
The 23-foot-wide, 208-foot-long, 13 1/2-foot-tall shipment will be inspected and weighed today, but its exact date of departure hasn’t been set yet, according to Rush and Pius Rolheiser, a spokesman for Imperial Oil. Continue reading
Moscow Parks and Recreation staff and T.R.E. Tree Services were shadowed Monday by protesters condemning the trimming of 18 trees along Washington Street to make room for the transport of two loads of refinery equipment by Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil up U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 to its Kearl Oil Sands Project in Alberta, Canada.
T.R.E., contracting with the oil company, was granted the tree trimming permit Friday by Parks and Recreation, which oversaw the work that started at 9 a.m. Monday and finished around 1:20 p.m.
A small number of protesters, many affiliated with the grassroots conservation group Wild Idaho Rising Tide, came out to protest the city’s allowance of the trimming, which they said would encourage many more oversized loads to make their way to the tar sands project, which they see as a pending ecological disaster, using Moscow as an industrial corridor. Continue reading
About a dozen protesters weren’t discouraged Saturday by the news that the Idaho Transportation Department will soon allow at least two oversized loads of oil refinery equipment to travel through Moscow on U.S. Highway 95.
Members of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) organized the demonstration that began mid-morning where Southview Avenue meets the highway south of downtown Moscow. Protesters marched north on the highway through the city while carrying a 208-foot-long rope outline of one of the loads, which in real life is 23 feet wide, 208 feet long, 13.6 feet tall, and weighs 410,300 pounds.
The Idaho Transportation Department issued two permits Friday for Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil to transport the loads from the Port of Lewiston into Montana via U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 beginning June 27. The equipment is destined for the company’s oil sands project in Alberta, Canada. Continue reading
One day after the Idaho Transportation Department green lighted two mega-loads to travel through Idaho toward the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta, protests against the controversial Canadian project will be staged across the globe.
Scores of protests are scheduled for London, Copenhagen, Vienna, 11 Canadian cities, and 25 cities in the United States. A group calling itself Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) will be protesting in Moscow, where at least two of the mega-loads will roll by later this month.
Read more: Global Protests Against Tar Sands
(By George Prentice, Boise Weekly)
MOSCOW – Activists from Wild Idaho Rising Tide will conduct a rally Saturday against megaloads.
Regional residents are invited to join WIRT for the rally at 10:30 am at the gravel parking lot just north of the Palouse River Drive and U.S. Highway 95 intersection. Organizers plan to employ banners, signs, musical instruments, voices, and a megaload-sized rope outline.
The group will make a two-mile march along the length of the megaload route through Moscow. They can be joined anywhere along the way. The group will conclude its march at the gravel lot on North Main Street at about 12:30 pm.
(By The Lewiston Tribune)
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 