Megaload Heads for Canada’s Oil Sands Region

Posted on October 23, 2012 by WIRT

The large megaload staged at the Port of Wilma is not a three-stage Saturn rocket but water purification equipment that began its journey through north central Idaho starting Monday night on U.S. Highway 12 (The Lewiston Tribune/Barry Kough photo).

Water purification equipment bound for a town in the heart of the Canadian oil sands left the Port of Wilma just west of Clarkston at about 10:15 p.m. Monday.

The 236-foot-long megaload edged its way onto Wawawai River Road just west of Red Wolf Bridge. Crew members walked alongside it, appearing to make adjustments to the equipment. White lights, looking almost like holiday decorations, hung on the sides.

It is one of the longest shipments ever to take U.S. Highway 12 across Idaho and was expected to be in Orofino by early this morning. The load is significantly shorter than the 300 feet that the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) initially reported as its length.

In contrast, oil company shipments that previously went on U.S. 12 were 208 and 233 feet long.

This latest cargo, manufactured by Newberg, Oregon-based Harris Thermal, was barged to the Port of Wilma from the Portland area. It is going to an unspecified end user in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, wrote Olga Haley in an email. Haley is an employee of a media relations agency handling publicity for Omega Morgan, the transport company. Continue reading →

New U.S. 12 Megaload

Posted on October 22, 2012 by WIRT

The Monday, October 22, KRFP Radio Free Moscow Evening Report, New U.S. 12 Megaload, describes the proposed Highway 12 transport of a half-million-pound tar sands water treatment vessel by hauler Omega Morgan. A KRFP interview of Helen Yost of Wild Idaho Rising Tide discusses its significance to regional challenges of similar industrial corridor ventures and planned resistance activities. Listen to Megaload to Travel up U.S. 12 Tonight between Lewiston and Montana between 11:57 and 2:40 of the Monday Evening Report.

New ‘Megaload’ to Travel Idaho Scenic Route

Posted on October 22, 2012 by WIRT

A 260-ton piece of equipment is winding its way through the inland Northwest this week. The Idaho Department of Transportation gave the green light to a shipper moving water purification equipment into Canada.

The shipment is about the same size as the so-called “megaloads.” Those were pieces of an oil processing facility headed for Canada’s oil sands. The new shipment will use the same hotly contested scenic route – Idaho’s Highway 12.

Read and listen to more: New ‘Megaload’ to Travel Idaho Scenic Route

(By Jessica Robinson, Northwest Public Radio)

Dana Lyons’ Great Coal Tour Makes a Stop in Rising Tide Country

Posted on October 22, 2012 by WIRT

Visiting communities gathered from potentially impacted groups like eastern Montana ranchers, Lummi Indians, and Puget Sound residents, from Billings to Bellingham, from Portland to Coos Bay, all along the route of proposed coal export trains through four Northwestern states, Dana’s fun and inspiring concert intermingled stories of resistance to associated mines, trains, and ports.

Read more and see the Cows with Guns video: Dana Lyons’ Great Coal Tour Makes a Stop in Rising Tide Country

(By Earth First! Newswire, cross-posted from Wild Idaho Rising Tide facebook page)

Omega Morgan Megaload Observation and Objection

Posted on October 21, 2012 by WIRT

On Wednesday, October 17, the Idaho Transportation Department issued a permit to Omega Morgan Inc. to haul a water treatment vessel of unknown ownership up U.S. Highway 12 between 10 pm and 5:30 am on Monday night, October 22, through Saturday night, October 27. At 300 feet, this longest overlegal load to ever traverse the wild and scenic river corridor and largest wildlands complex in the contiguous U.S. states weighs 520,000 pounds and measures 20 feet wide and 22 feet high. Like the four 226-foot-long ConocoPhillips megaloads and one since dismantled ExxonMobil test validation module that Idahoans monitored last year, it will probably encounter difficult passage frustrated by impending snow and tight curves between roadside rock cliffs and guard-railed precipices over the Lochsa and Middle Fork Clearwater rivers.

The region, if not the nation, is watching this incursion, as apparent in a recent Boise Weekly article, Idaho Transportation Department Greenlights Mega-Load for U.S. Highway 12, and an Oregonian piece, Water-Purification Equipment Will Be Transported on Disputed Idaho-Montana Mountain Highway. Your involvement in monitoring and protesting this likely tar sands equipment as it grinds up highways from the Port of Wilma, Washington, to northern Alberta is more essential than ever. Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and our regional allies have coordinated two protests and four nights of monitoring activities to confront this industrial invasion. Continue reading →

Dana Lyons’ Great Coal Train Tour in Moscow 10-19-12

Posted on October 21, 2012 by WIRT

On Friday evening, October 19, performer and environmental educator Dana Lyons of Bellingham, Washington, brought his Great Coal Train Tour to Moscow. Best known for his comedy hit song Cows with Guns, Dana has recorded eight albums during his lifetime artistic career, working around the world to raise awareness, activism, and funds for environmental and social justice causes. Visiting communities from Billings to Bellingham and from Portland to Coos Bay along the route of proposed coal export trains through four Northwestern states, Dana’s fun and inspiring concert intermingled stories of resistance to associated mines, trains, and ports, gathered from potentially impacted groups like eastern Montana ranchers, Lummi Indians, and Puget Sound residents. While federal, state, and county agencies accept public scoping comments on the largest prospective coal export facility in North America, five local conservation organizations hosted this benefit event to bolster knowledge and participation in this significant regional and global issue. Wild Idaho Rising Tide, the Palouse Group of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Clearwater, Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition, and the Palouse Broadband of Great Old Broads for Wilderness offered appetizers and no-host beer and wine for almost 100 attendees at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse. After the show, visiting Occupy Spokane activists and Wild Idaho Rising Tide members staged a light projection action near the Sixth and Jackson street intersection in Moscow. Illuminating some recently repainted crop silos with messages denouncing Northwest coal exports and proclaiming various group affiliations, Ziggy and his comrades huddled under an awning in the rain, as passing motorists and pedestrians marveled at huge spotlighted campaign slogans and logos.

Continue reading →

Megaload Set to Begin Journey Monday on U.S. Highway 12

Posted on October 18, 2012 by WIRT

Nighttime traffic is expected to be slowed next week on U.S. Highway 12, as a megaload takes a four-night journey across north central Idaho.

The 20-foot-wide, 300-foot-long, 22-foot-high shipment weighing 520,000 pounds will be carrying water purification equipment headed for Canada, according to a news release from the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD).

It will travel between 10 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. each night, leaving Monday from the Port of Wilma just west of Clarkston and entering Idaho on Down River Road before the journey to Orofino on U.S. 12.

The second leg of the trip is from Orofino to Kooskia, the third portion goes from Kooskia to milepost 127, and the fourth part will take it to the Montana border. Continue reading →

Flashpoints Interview of Alma Hasse & Helen Yost

Posted on October 17, 2012 by WIRT

Alma Hasse of Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction and Helen Yost of Wild Idaho Rising Tide talked with nationally broadcast radio program host Dennis Bernstein between 0:56 and 20:38 of the Wednesday, October 17, edition of Flashpoints. Alma and Helen discussed citizen resistance to looming first fracking in Idaho, to tar sands equipment transports in eastern Montana and north central Idaho, and to national energy policies and debates.

Idaho Proposed Rules for Class II Injection Wells: Notes and Comments

Posted on October 17, 2012 by WIRT

Last year, the Idaho Legislature passed House Bill 464 and its many detrimental provisions. It crippled local governments’ ability to conduct the conditional use permitting process for oil and gas development and imbedded the federal “Halliburton Loophole” for hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Idaho state law, meaning that the practice of fracking does not fall under the definition of injection. Thus, neither fracked wells nor wells used for the storage of natural gas and oil are considered injection wells and thus are not regulated as Class II injection wells in Idaho. The state’s new proposed rules strictly concern the storage of toxins that are a by-product of oil and gas development, such as produced water, brine water, the fracking fluid pumped out of a fracked well, etc.

Please read the following articles respectively dated September and June 2012 for a better understanding of injection well issues and risks and the history of their oversight:

Are Fracking Wastewater Wells Poisoning the Ground beneath Our Feet? by Abrahm Lustgarten, Scientific American

The Trillion-Gallon Loophole: Lax Rules for Drillers that Inject Pollutants into the Earth, by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica Continue reading →

Idaho Transportation Department Greenlights Mega-Load for U.S. Highway 12

Posted on October 17, 2012 by WIRT

The Idaho Transportation Department has issued a permit today for a mega-load to roll across Idaho from the Port of Wilma in Washington, entering Idaho on Route 128, and along U.S. Highway 12 to the Montana border. But this time, the shipment – which weighs approximately 520,000 pounds – is water purification equipment destined for northern Alberta.

The load, which has been shipped up the Columbia River, is expected to leave the Port of Wilma beginning Monday, October 22, and take four days to reach the Montana border before heading north.

The mega-load, which is 300 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 22 feet high, will be accompanied by three flagging teams, three pilot vehicles, two vehicles with portable signs, and the Idaho State Police.

(By George Prentice, Boise Weekly)

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