WIRT Newsletter: Calumet Megaloads, Oil & Gas Rules, Ziggy for State Rep, & Fight or Flight Workshop

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Calumet Refinery Megaloads

Thanks to Julian Matthews of Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Protecting the Environment for photos of the completely assembled and prepared Calumet tar sands refinery megaload awaiting an Idaho permit and travel at the Port of Wilma near Clarkston, Washington [1].  Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) public involvement coordinator Adam Rush stated late on Friday that the Bigge Crane and Rigging/Mammoet-hauled megaload will not move from the port until late during the week of August 3 or “early” on August 11 (Sunday night?) [2].  The bottom hydrocracker section, attempting Highway 95 and 200 passage across Idaho to Great Falls, already received an ITD permit for unused July 27 to 31 transport (so it could obtain a Washington permit?), according to ITD public records received by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) on Thursday [3].  It represents the heaviest and longest, climate- and Earth-wrecking, fossil fuel machine to ever cross our region, weighing 1,605,152 pounds and stretching out 441 feet long, 28 feet wide, and 16 feet, 4 inches high.

On Monday afternoon, August 4, one of WIRT’s amazing Montana allies posted a question on the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) website and received this polite and prompt reply: “Thank you for visiting our website and your inquiry concerning Mammoet Company or Bigge Crane and Rigging.  They have been working through the process, and no permits have been issued at this time.”  In his email reply, our friend asked MDT’s Dan Kiely if he could please notify him if MDT grants a permit for this megaload.  He is also keeping his Flathead Reservation tribal council friends and other neighbors apprised of the situation.  WIRT will issue a report and petition on this issue this week…

Idaho Oil and Gas Rules

Idaho Concerned Area Residents for the Environment, Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction, and Wild Idaho Rising Tide harbor myriad concerns about the proposed, draft Idaho oil and gas rules as currently rewritten at four June and July 2014 negotiated rulemaking sessions at the Capitol in Boise.  With the assistance of an attorney, we compiled and submitted extensive comments on these rules, but unfortunately, we did not finish these endeavors in time to share them with all of you to support your comments [4].  As demonstrated by regulator discussion and behavior at these recently-concluded sessions, we believe that state commissions and agencies will largely ignore our requests for stronger IDAPA 20.07.02 rules that could significantly improve protections of Idahoans’ democratic participation, property rights, and air and water quality.  As the Idaho Department of Lands presents these rule changes, governing development of the state’s modest oil and gas play, to the Idaho Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on Tuesday, August 5, we assume that decision makers may once again favor industry over the best interests of Idaho citizens.  Although the proposed rules will again undergo (YOUR!) public scrutiny through a hearing and 21-day comment period in early September 2014, we suspect that few citizen-suggested alterations will occur before commission approval and Idaho Legislature consideration and enactment. Continue reading →

Climate Justice Forum: Justin Kay 8-4-14

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The Monday, August 4, Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) gratefully welcomes Justin Kay of Resistance Ecology, who is co-staging the nationwide Fight or Flight Summer 2014 Tour with The Bunny Alliance and Earth First! Journal, to intensify protests of Delta Airlines and the global Gateway to Hell campaigns to end the transport of animals to labs.  From Lakota territory in South Dakota, Justin will provide tour and campaign updates and talk about a Northern Rockies direct action discussion and workshop hosted by the tour and WIRT in Moscow, Idaho, next Tuesday evening, August 12.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT, live at 90.3 FM and online, the show also covers continent-wide climate activism news and dirty energy developments, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as her/his KRFP DJ.

ITD Highway 95 & 200 Megaload Public Records 7-31-14

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Bigge Megaload Map 1

Bigge Megaload Map 2

Wild Idaho Rising Tide will post more of the most pertinent Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) public records about a proposed hydrocracker section transport up U.S. Highway 95 and Idaho Highway 200, en route to the Calumet Great Falls, Montana, tar sands refinery, as we scrutinize and sort about 100 documents received on July 31, 2014.

Bigge Idaho Route Plan Draft 2 (May 29, 2014)

Bigge Transportation Plan – Revision 1 (May 29, 2014)

Mammoet Megaload Permit 7-27-14 (July 27 to 31, 2014)

Pertinent ITD Email Messages (May 30 to July 21, 2014)

Bigge Montana Transportation Plan (August 15, 2014)

Bigge Montana Traffic Control Plan (August 15, 2014)

Port Commission President: Coal Doesn’t Rev Our Engine

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Coal is not among the ventures the Port of Lewiston is pursuing, as it seeks business for its expanded container dock.

The port has had three or four inquiries about coal in the past 3 1/2 years, with the most recent arriving sometime in the fall.  But Port Commission President Mary Hasenoehrl said the port has never actively sought coal customers.

“The Port of Lewiston is not currently working with anyone regarding coal shipments,” said Port Manager David Doeringsfeld.

Any port along the Snake and Columbia river system has likely handled requests similar to those put to the Port of Lewiston, Doeringsfeld said.  Barging coal on the system is an option since coal is being mined in Wyoming and Montana and shipped overseas.

The comments from Hasenoehrl and Doeringsfeld followed a records request by the Lewiston Tribune seeking any documents the port had involving coal from January 1 to July 23.

The port provided an economic impact study about a Port of Morrow coal facility along the Columbia River in Boardman, Oregon, the Port of Morrow’s lease option for the operation, a newspaper article about increasing traffic on the lower Columbia River, and a letter from a megaload opponent. Continue reading →

Emergency Tuesday Meeting, Weekly Thursday WIRT Potlucks, & August Events

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WIRT Co-Activists,

Please attend the emergency, potluck, protest-planning meeting at the Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) Activists House at 7 pm on Tuesday evening, July 29, instead of on Thursday this week.  Thanks to the vigilance of four WIRT scouts over the last five days, including today (Monday, July 28) at 2 pm, we have obtained photos of Bigge Crane and Rigging crews loading on trailers one of the three Port of Wilma megaloads, a hydrocracker section essential to production expansion of its Great Falls refinery destination [1].  WIRT anticipates that heavy haulers, including prior nemesis Mammoet, may attempt to move the half-million-pound module, via similarly heavy, on-site trailers and three semi-trucks, up Highways 95 and 200 before WIRT receives Idaho Transportation Department public records about the transports, due by Thursday, July 31.  WIRT activists and our community must prepare for this onslaught with more than a sign-waving protest…

With plenty of potential road and rail blockades on the near horizon, Wild Idaho Rising Tide is holding weekly potluck meetings every Tuesday at 7 pm at the WIRT Activists House in Moscow.  Please see the WIRT Events Calendar and recent newsletters posted on the WIRT website, for further information about these topics of upcoming strategizing and planning sessions [2, 3].

* Coordination and tactics for scouting, protesting, monitoring, and solidarity demonstrations against the three Mammoet/Bigge Crane and Rigging-hauled hydrocracker parts embarking in late July/early August from the Port of Wilma via river, rail, and/or road, through Moscow, Spokane, and Sandpoint to Great Falls

* Carpools and registration with the Occupy Spokane Scholarship Fund for the Tuesday through Tuesday, August 5 to 12, sixth annual Northwest Localize This! direct action training camp hosted by Backbone Campaign allies on Vashon Island, Washington

* Local publicity and participation in the 6 pm Tuesday, August 12, Fight or Flight Northern Rockies Tour stop and direct action training workshop co-sponsored by The Bunny Alliance, Earth First! Journal, Resistance Ecology, and WIRT at the Attic, up the back stairs of 314 East Second Street in Moscow

* Regional support and involvement in the Saturday, August 16 coordinated direct actions against coal export, Northwest Communities Oppose Coal Exports, organized by Idaho and Montana groups in Bozeman, Missoula, Sandpoint, and possibly Spokane, Oregon, and Washington locations Continue reading →

Bigge Stages the Last Calumet Megaload

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Bigge Stages the Last Calumet Megaload 7-24-14 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photos)

On Thursday, July 24, two Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists scouted the Port of Wilma, across the Snake River from Clarkston, Washington, to document with photos and ascertain any changes at the fenced compound where Bigge Crane and Rigging stores the last of three rusty, cylindrical, hydrocracker sections stranded since mid-December 2013.  Participants in the Nez Perce Environmental Summit on Saturday, July 19, discovered the two other, larger, megaload parts vanished, with crews still in the port lot leased by Omega Morgan in late 2013, for its two massive evaporator cargoes [1].  Last observed on short, 12-axle trailers at the port on Tuesday, July 15, the two heavier, missing loads, 573,000 and 661,000 pounds each, likely departed by barge downriver or by train on the Watco Companies Great Northwest Railroad to the Tri-Cities, Washington [2].  According to late-May newspaper articles that suggested megaload rail travel, haulers could have transported the shipments on Schnabel train cars as oncoming traffic to potentially explosive, West Coast-bound, unit “bomb trains” of fracked Bakken shale oil.  The behemoths could currently be moving across eastern Washington and northern Idaho on either Union Pacific or Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail lines to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, then eastward on the BNSF railroad to a spur line heading south from Shelby to the Montana Refining Company in Great Falls.  The hydrocracker column formed by stacking the three purportedly irreducible components upright constitutes equipment essential to tripling Calumet Specialty Products Partners’ refinery production of Alberta tar sands, Bow River crude, and Bakken shale oil.

Activists noticed on July 19 that heavy hauler Bigge had left a white and red crane, a heavy-duty, white semi-truck, a small, orange truck, several flatbed trailers, and some white trailer pieces resembling the steel suspension systems seen around other, huge, fossil fuel contraptions in the region since February 2011.  The San Leandro, California-based company also abandoned the 504,000-pound, lightest, bottom part of the hydrocracker.  Its largest diameter of the three modules may have deterred its passage by train through tunnels, close, two-way tracks, or other rail line impediments, while its weight and length, when combined with interlocked trailers and trucks, could forebode the heaviest and longest megaload to ever traverse rural northern Idaho highway routes.  On Thursday evening, July 24, WIRT comrades saw additional Bigge gear that alerted them to imminent megaload movement, perhaps within a week.  A second, white semi-truck occupied the southwestern corner of the lot, while the orange truck, previously parked next to the hydrocracker piece, sat behind it, attached to the white trailer.  Absent during prior scouting forays, long, dark-blue, trailer sections loomed in front of the module, and a colossal, dark-blue, metal bar on a specialized semi-trailer, like the top of megaload lifts seen at the Ports of Pasco and Umatilla, crowded the eastern pavement outside the fence, along with a uniformed security guard in an older, white and red pickup truck. Continue reading →

Refinery Says Megaloads to Go by Rail

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But Calumet official won’t disclose when heavy machinery will leave Port of Wilma for Montana

Two of the three megaloads bound for a Calumet refinery in Great Falls, Montana, will leave the Port of Wilma by rail, not truck.

Exactly when the shipments will depart the Port of Wilma is not being disclosed, said company spokesman Noel Ryan.

Calumet will provide an update on the Great Falls project, which is doubling the capacity of the refinery, in its quarterly earnings report in early August.  Ryan said the company will not get into the details of how the machinery at the Port of Wilma is being transported.

Ryan’s statements came after days of heavy speculation by megaload opponents that two pieces of the equipment have left the port.  The machinery is so large that it would take up two lanes of highway, if it went by road.

The crude unit and hydrocracker that were taken to the Port of Wilma are key components in the expansion of the refinery, and Ryan said they will separate crude oil into products such as gasoline, diesel, and asphalt. Continue reading →

Support the Land Defenders Arrested on Monday at the Utah Tar Sands!

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On Monday, July 21, about 80 climate justice land defenders peacefully expressed their First Amendment right to free speech, by staging a massive direct action at the site of U.S. Oil Sands’ tar sands strip mine at PR Springs in the Book Cliffs, Utah.  The protest that blocked mining facilities construction culminated a week-long direct action training camp held within two miles of the mine.  Participants of Climate Justice Summer Camp traveled from numerous organizations, states, and sovereign tribal nations to learn direct action skills and build networks.  These inspiring heroes left the comfort of their homes, the company of their families, and the security of their jobs to fight for the future of this beautiful, historical area.

Early in the morning, activists and supporters of Canyon Country Rising Tide, Peaceful Uprising, and Utah Tar Sands Resistance locked themselves to equipment, and a fenced storage cage around it, used to clear-cut and grade an area designated for the tar sands mining company’s processing plant.  Other protesters formed a physical blockade with their bodies, to halt construction work and to protect their locked-down comrades.  They hung and displayed banners off the cage that read: “You Are Trespassing on Ute Land” and “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance.” Continue reading →

Oil and Gas Rulemaking Public Meeting on Tuesday, July 22

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In April 2014, the Idaho Oil and Gas Conservation Commission voted to enter into negotiated rulemaking, to improve and clarify the existing Rules Pertaining to Conservation of Crude Oil and Natural Gas, IDAPA 20.07.02.  The commission published a notice of intent about this process in the Idaho Administrative Bulletin on June 4, 2014.  The Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) is holding four negotiated rulemaking public meetings in the Idaho Capitol at 8:30 am MDT on June 6 and 18 and on July 2 and 22 [1].  Purportedly state-initiated, but primarily industry-instigated, changes to the rules governing oil and gas development in Idaho are open to oral and written public comments and eventual hearings on the final draft of the proposed rules.  IDL oil and gas program manager Bobby Johnson has managed these rulemaking sessions that have drawn the attendance of agency staff, industry representatives, and stakeholders from Alta Mesa, the Idaho Association of Counties, Idaho Conservation League, IDL, Idaho Department of Water Resources, and Idaho Petroleum Council, and concerned county commissioners, Gem and Payette county residents and landowners, and Boise citizens.

Much that Idahoans cherish is at stake through this rulemaking and associated legislative approval of revised Idaho oil and gas rules and other related laws.  As Gem County activist Joe Morton asserts, the new IDAPA rules and prerogatives advanced by Governor Otter’s appointed Oil and Gas Conservation Commission are eroding, if not eliminating, Idaho private property rights [2].  The state legislature mandated legal clauses proclaiming that the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission shall have “authority over all persons and property, public and private” concerning oil and gas extraction.  Idaho lawmakers also removed local government control of oil and gas exploitation with passage of House Bill 464 in 2012, which states that “No ordinance, resolution, requirement, or standard of a city, county, or political subdivision, except a state agency with authority, shall actually or operationally prohibit the extraction of oil and gas.”  Besides many other troublesome rule changes favoring industry, state agency and commission members are currently displaying corporatism at its best: Writing new IDAPA rules that could force pool 45 percent of non-participating private property owners into relinquishing their rights to minerals taken from under their lands.  Like landowners who do not own their subsurface minerals and accompanying rights in “split estates,” the state of Idaho would allow extraction of oil and gas regardless of property owners wishes. Continue reading →