Wednesday 7 am Port of Lewiston Budget Hearing/Protest

The Port of Lewiston will hold a second hearing about its proposed budget at 7 am on Wednesday, June 11.  Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) is calling for another port showdown protest and oral public comments, followed by Port of Wilma scouting.  The boondoggle* on the banks of the Clearwater River that invites and facilitates Alberta tar sands and fracked Bakken shale oil exploitation equipment deserves our ongoing resistance.  Expensively costing Nez Perce County and Idaho taxpayers more than it has earned ever since it was built, the port now intends to waste some more hard-earned tax dollars on unnecessary initiatives that counter Idahoans’ best interests in a clean energy future, not to mention their fondest desires for the integrity of indigenous and public lands and rights, highways, water, air, and climate.

As the Port of Lewiston crafts its budget for the coming fiscal year, the port is seeking to increase the amount it sets aside for legal expenses, from $9,000 this year to $33,000 next year, to be prepared for litigation to keep the U.S. Highway 12 corridor open for megaloads.  It has also more than doubled the money available for administration travel to $21,500.  …In upcoming months, [port manager] Doeringsfeld…will also visit places such as Spokane and the oil fields in North Dakota, looking for new outgoing and incoming cargo.  …Port commissioners took the first of two votes on Wednesday, [May 14] needed to impose the tax on Nez Perce County residents.  The next one will be at the port’s budget hearing at 7 am on June 11 [1].

According to a Tuesday phone conversation with port manager David Doeringsfeld (who said “See you tomorrow…”), port meetings occur at the publicly inconvenient time of 7 am to accommodate several commissioners’ 8 am workday starting times.  WIRT wonders why port officials are so eager to attract business that has met so much regional resistance, why they feel compelled to get involved with external legal actions, and if the port’s charter condones such activities.  Please come prepared for a pre-hearing demonstration with your protest signs at 6:30 am, and to present your oral public comments against the port’s megaload-facilitating budget, defending both Highways 12 and 95 from fossil fuel infrastructure and other megaloads.  Carpools depart the WIRT Activists House in Moscow (call 208-301-8039 for the address) at 5:30 am sharp on Wednesday morning, or meet us outside the Port of Lewiston office at 1626 Sixth Avenue North, near the port in north Lewiston at 6:30 am.

*Boondoggle: (unknown 1930s origin) work or activity that is wasteful, pointless, or worthless but gives the appearance of having value; a public project of questionable merit that typically involves political patronage and graft; to waste money or time on such projects

WIRT Confronts the Idaho Republican Convention

As activists of Moscow, statewide ground-zero for climate activism, we still need to devise some direct actions commensurate with the source of many of Idaho’s political, environmental, and climate woes: the Idaho Republican Party.  WIRT announced an initial, emergency planning meeting held last Thursday evening, June 5, and changed our regular meeting schedule to twice monthly on the first and third Thursdays, to coordinate plans for the Idaho Republican State Convention in Moscow on June 12 to 14, for Highway 95/200 megaload blockades, and for other summer events [2].  (Please see the linked convention schedule: 2014 Idaho Republican Convention Agenda 2.)  As described through the poster sent with the last WIRT newsletter, Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition and/or the Moscow area residents behind the recent screenings of Years of Living Dangerously are also hosting a Thursday evening rally and dance called Welcome Republicans! Let’s Join Together to Tackle Climate Change!  They hope to attract visiting Republicans to Friendship Square in Moscow, for some climate change information, music, and speakers.  But Republican convention participants will obviously not stray a mile from the Best Western University Inn and Kibby Dome convention venues for a preach-to-the-leftist-choir event in downtown Moscow. Continue reading →

WIRT activists, supporters, and friends,

Paul McPoland’s PeaceLove Gig

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) extends our greatest gratitude to all of Paul McPoland’s dozens of dear co-workers, friends, family, and fellow activists who participated in his memorial at the WIRT Activists House and Dave Willard’s home on Saturday, May 31, between 2 pm and the wee hours of June.  We appreciate sharing Paul’s megaload protest reports, memorial cards, tea and treats, stories and remembrances of Paul, tears, understanding, comfort, new ideas, love, hugs, laughter, Paul’s favorite music, T-shirts, polished rocks, books, and tequila, ribs from his freezer, and two great gatherings.  (We hope that you enjoyed every moment, Paul!)

WIRT is still searching for ways to commemorate our stalwart and sincere “right-hand man” who called WIRT activists to action, monitored megaloads, reported on the resistance movement, offered myriad volunteer services, and lived at and watched over the WIRT House as his base and refuge, during some of the finest years of his life of inspiring contributions to his community.  Please offer your suggestions for ongoing WIRT initiatives that we could instigate in Paul’s honor.  WIRT tried to extend the date of Paul’s memorial event on facebook, as a regional venue for continuing to share memories and ideas, but facebook will not allow such changes afterwards.

DON’T POISON MOSCOW!

Residents, reject City of Moscow Street Department toxic trespass!  Put your street, curb edge, and/or alley in front and/or adjacent to your home on the “No Spray List” for the current season, and manually pull weeds and nurture desirable plant growth in your yards.

Public Notice to Moscow Residents

Beginning on Monday, May 12, 2013, Shull Brothers Weed Control will be spraying weeds, according to the City of Moscow Street Department weed spraying contract.  This spraying will continue throughout the spring and summer seasons as needed.  Spraying is a major method of controlling noxious weeds.  Herbicide is sprayed on selected streets, street cracks, and alleys, along curb edges, in cracks where sidewalks abut curbs, and around dead-end street barricades, bridges, guardrails, and fire hydrants on City rights-of-way.  Chemicals to be used include: Krovar I, Banvel, Transline, Telar, Surflan, RII, R900XC, Nalcotrol, Sahara, Dimension, Vengeance, Plainview, Oust, Hyvar, Round-up, Rodeo, 2,4-D, Arsenal, Milestone, Escort, Gallery, and Edict.  Applications will include a wetting agent and drift retardant.  Any resident who wishes not to have their street or curb edge sprayed in front of their residence and/or adjacent alley, and is willing to control weeds themselves, can call or e-mail Tammy Gray with the City of Moscow Street Department, to be put on a “No Spray List” for the current season: 208-883-7097, tgray@ci.moscow.id.us.

EARLY SUMMER EVENTS

June 5: Twice-Monthly WIRT Potluck Meeting (Thursday 7 pm, WIRT Activists House, Moscow, Idaho, call 208-301-8039 for directions)  We will plan WIRT direct actions for the Idaho Republican State Convention in Moscow on June 12 to 14 and for Highway 95/200 megaload blockades.  The Moscow area residents behind the recent screenings of Years of Living Dangerously are also hosting a climate change-oriented rally and street dance called Welcome, Republicans!  (See the Welcome Republicans Flyer.)

June 6: Sixth Annual Intolerista Wingding (Friday 6 to 10 pm, 1912 Center, 412 East Third Street, Moscow, Idaho)  Roy Zimmerman and core WIRT activist Jeanne McHale will play political and cultural satirical music, including the WIRT song The Tide Is Rising, while hosts offer beer, wine, soda, and snacks for sale at this free event open to the public.  Contact Tom Hansen at 208-882-5526 for more information. Continue reading →

Mammoet Withdraws Megaload Permits

For months during 2014, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and eight allied Idaho, Montana, and Washington groups have remained uncertain of the status of the long-standing, region-wide, tar sands ‘megaload’ onslaught advanced by hauler Mammoet USA South Inc. [1].  More than three years of controversy and citizen resistance have surrounded the Vancouver, Washington-based company’s tar sands mining and refinery equipment transports through the sacrifice zone of court-blocked U.S. Highway 12 – U.S. Highway 95 through Moscow and other northern Idaho routes.  In 2011 and 2012, Mammoet moved 350 ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil components of the Kearl Oil Sands Project across Washington, Idaho, and Montana, including 70-plus modules through relentless WIRT and allied protests and convoy monitoring in Moscow and along Highway 95, in Spokane, Washington, and on U.S. Highway 395 and Interstate 90.  During intensive civil disobedience against Mammoet equipment shipments, resulting in 13 arrests, citations, and court cases arising from sit-in and critical-mass-bike blockades and monitoring, allied campaigns and lawsuits declared “conquest” of the re-routed modules of one-fifth of an Alberta tar sands processing facility, overshadowing the region’s efforts to halt the climate change wrought by fossil fuel corporations and unaccountable, facilitating governments.

On Thursday, May 15, and Monday, May 19, WIRT and allies received Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) public records indicating that Mammoet has abandoned its most recent plans to transport three hydrocracker parts from the Port of Wilma, Clarkston, Washington, across north Idaho via Highway 95 and either Interstate 90 or Idaho Highway 200, to a Great Falls, Montana, tar sands refinery expansion [2].  In response to April 28 and 29 written WIRT requests and a May 14 phone message, ITD District 1 staff in Coeur d’Alene denied the existence of any April 2014 public records about Mammoet’s proposal [3].  On at least four occasions since the mid-December 2013 public revelation of Mammoet’s recent scheme to haul three 1.6-million-pound, 441-feet-long megaloads up Highway 95 to Montana, ITD has obviously (with supporting evidence) withheld or denied and otherwise provided late or incomplete public records requested by WIRT.

But WIRT allies asked for the same April 2014 information from ITD headquarters in Boise on April 30, and inexplicably obtained and forwarded it, validating that the Boise ITD office did not share some of this material with Coeur d’Alene ITD employees and that the latter purposely withheld public documents from WIRT.  Among various bridge weight-bearing analyses and ID-Mammoet communications, an April 23 email message from Warren “Chip” Kachel of Mammoet to ITD District 1 operations manager Jason Minzghor, Doral Hoff and Reggie Phipps of ITD, Chris Schenck of the Idaho State Police, Cynthia Heinert and Brad Marten of the Montana Department of Transportation, Sonja Clark of the Washington Department of Transportation, and Richard Zondag declared a “termination of permits” with its subject line.  The terse note states, “Please cancel all permits involving Mammoet USA routing to Great Falls, Montana, from the Port of Wilma, Washington, via Idaho U.S. 95/Idaho 200” [4].

Wild Idaho Rising Tide extends our deepest gratitude and congratulations on this issue development to the many WIRT activists and allies in four states who have scouted and documented megaload ports and routes, researched and provided government files and newspaper articles, offered legal advice and defense, attended and protested at public meetings, and participated in discussions and direct action workshops.  As big oil, coal, and gas companies increasingly struggle to maximize their profits though extraction, production, and transportation of marginally lucrative, difficultly obtained extreme energy, grassroots resistance to consequent ecocide, genocide, and climate chaos grows around the world:

For decades, backlash has been thought to be both limited and ineffectual, but new evidence suggests that protests from local people are effective, extremely costly for the companies, and often lead to substantive changes to or total abandonment of a project…Perhaps not surprisingly, protests were most successful when they took place early on, during feasibility and construction phases of a project [5]. Continue reading →