Missing Mammoet Megaload Trailer

At 1 pm on Monday, May 5, 2014, a photo taken by Moscow documentarian Tom Hansen at the Port of Wilma, Washington, revealed breaking news about the heaviest and longest megaloads ever proposed for passage on U.S. Highway 95 and either Interstate 90 or Idaho Highway 200 [1].  During the week since the April 28, 2014 scouting expedition by a core Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activist, megaload hauler Mammoet had removed its only trailer from one of three hydrocracker parts, bound on a 1.6-million-pound, 441-feet-long assemblage of cargo, trailers, and trucks for a tar sands refinery expansion in Great Falls, Montana [2, 3].  Like previous observations, push and pull trucks and security guards were noticeably missing from the leased port yard.  Either temporarily or permanently, Mammoet has apparently been dissuaded by a coalition of allied organizations and/or has abandoned both recently identified northern Idaho megaload shipment routes to Montana.  A comment by an aggravated opponent, in response to the last, website-posted WIRT newsletter, at about the same time as discovery of the missing trailer, may indicate that these behemoths and other tar sands modules could take circuitous paths from West Coast ports [4].

These units of an essential, industrial component of Calumet Specialty Products Partners’ $400 million Montana Refining Company expansion project have been awaiting transport at the Port of Wilma by the Snake River near Clarkston, since mid-December 2013.  The installed hydrocracker with a 25,000-barrels-per-day (bpd) capacity could double refinery production from 10,000 to 20,000 bpd, starting during the first quarter of 2016 [5].  Calumet plans to convert crude tar sands bitumen into diesel fuel that powers the mining equipment and trucking fleets operating in the sacrifice zone of fracked Bakken shale oil extraction.  Over the last year, removal of several large refinery tanks, excavation of 15,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated mainly by lead and gasoline, and purported “air-tight” rail car shipment of the hazardous waste to an appropriate facility in Indiana have delayed expansion project construction until after August 1, 2014 [6].  Now, the timely delivery of this rusty remnant of a bygone fossil fuel era and its mechanical integrity under high-pressure and -temperature operating conditions, after years of horizontal exposure to weather, are precarious and questionable, thanks to poor industry planning and commendable public involvement in the situation.

Resistance to Highway 95 Megaloads

Since the onset of this second controversy over Mammoet tar sands transports on Highway 95, after 32 nights of megaload convoys prompted relentless WIRT protests and monitoring forays in 2011-12, northern Idaho and eastern Washington citizens and organizations have demonstrated disapproval of government agency and public input processes [7, 8].  Even while staging and supporting 28 protests of three half-as-large Omega Morgan tar sands mining equipment shipments, each moving 1200 miles across three states during four winter months, WIRT and allies attended and protested at Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) and City of Moscow meetings, requested ITD public records, and publicly posted the results and other information about this Mammoet transportation scheme [9].  Five regional, grassroots, conservation- and climate change-oriented groups including WIRT forced extended and expanded environmental analysis, public involvement, and subsequent diversion of Mammoet’s first proposed hydrocracker route through Coeur d’Alene, via a co-written letter of concern sent to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), ITD, and other responsible city, county, state, and federal representatives and environmental, transportation, and wildlife agencies [10].  WIRT organized and scheduled five meetings/presentations and direct action training sessions for tribal and climate activists in four northern Idaho cities, and scouted, photographed, and videotaped both the potential East Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive/temporary Interstate 90 on-ramp route and the proposed alternative course over the almost two-mile-long Highway 95 Long Bridge near Sandpoint and the federally-designated Highway 200 Pend Oreille Scenic Byway through or near six state wildlife management areas or preserves [4, 11, 12]. Continue reading →

CONGRATULATIONS & CONDOLENCES

Congratulations to all of the diligent, inspiring, fellow Moscow citizens and Earth Day Award recipients, especially Pat Rathmann of the Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition (PESC) and Citizens’ Climate Lobby, who make even radical Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists proud to call Moscow home! [1, 2]

Our dear comrade, core WIRT activist Paul McPoland, died unexpectedly of unknown causes at a friend’s dwelling where he had been staying, on the night of April 29-30.  City police officers are still notifying his family and investigating the situation, while friends arrange a memorial that will likely take place in Moscow on the weekend of May 16 to 18.

Moscow also lost our beloved regional outdoor recreation expert and generous benefactor of community causes including WIRT, John Crock, owner of Hyperspud Sports, on April 28.  We extend our deepest sympathies to John’s family and Laurene Sorensen, his long-time partner, new wife, and this year’s Moscow Renaissance Fair Queen [3].

All Against the Haul founder and Oregon anti-megaload activist Trish Weber and her husband Mark Rose of Corvallis, Oregon, and hundreds of friends and family members grieve the death of their seven-year-old son, Nigel Rose-Weber, on April 4, after he stayed home from school due to sudden illness [4].

UPCOMING EVENTS

(Check the WIRT website Events Calendar often!)

May 3-4: Moscow Renaissance Fair

Come out to the Moscow Renaissance Fair this weekend, May 3 and 4.  On Saturday and Sunday, from 10 am until 6 pm (and later on Saturday), WIRT will be roaming the East City Park grounds in Moscow, Idaho, selling Clean Energy Bars: cookie- and brownie-like snack bars made of organic, healthful, non-sugar ingredients [5].  All proceeds support our outreach work, travel funds, and demonstration supplies (and maybe some upcoming, anti-megaload, legal fees…).  Watch for a wandering WIRT vendor that looks like the following linked image, except in Renaissance garb [6].  WIRT activists are welcome to dress the part and take shifts: We are begging for basic, bake-sale survival.

May 9: Nez Perce Grassroots Environmental Summit

Respectfully participate in the Nez Perce Grassroots Environmental Summit between 9 am and 4 pm on Friday, May 9, at the Clearwater River Resort, 17500 Nez Perce Road off Highway 2/95 near Lewiston, Idaho [7-9].  Coordinating partners Nez Perce Tribal Environmental Association and Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples invite all tribal nations and supporters among Rising Tide groups and regional environmental and tribal organizations to attend the gathering and speak about Pacific Northwest and greater Northern Plains issues such as treaty rights, tar sands, megaloads, climate change, and wolf protection.  This high-priority summit could occur at about the same time and place as the first of three 1.6-million-pound, Great Falls tar sands refinery megaloads would attempt to climb the seven-percent Lewiston Grade, gaining 2000 vertical feet in seven miles out of the Snake/Clearwater River valley.

For registration and information, contact Julian Matthews at jmatthews@alumni.uidaho.edu or 208-790-4296.  Please widely share and distribute the event poster and facebook and email announcements to your tribal and non-tribal contacts across the region, and let WIRT know how we can assist your attendance of this great convergence.  Portlanders are organizing carpools via Vicki Creel and Kath Cotrell, who have expressed interest in such a trip.  The WIRT Activists House and van, about 30 miles away from this summit, can lodge and transport up to seven people, and core WIRT activist Sharon Cousins has offered space for a few people to sleep indoors or in tents, trucks, or vans.  To protect sacred air, Moscow and Pullman area activists will carpool from the Eastside Marketplace south parking lot, near the Troy Highway, at 8 am on Friday, May 9.

June 24-July 1: Fifth & Final Tar Sands Healing Walk

Join PESC and WIRT carpools and caravans to and from First Nations communities near tar sands mining operations surrounding Fort McMurray, Alberta, via the Tar Sands Solidarity Journey from June 24 to July 1.  This summer marks your last opportunity to participate in the final Athabasca region Tar Sands Healing Walk, happening on Friday to Sunday, June 27 to 29 [10].  As healing walk organizers explain, “The story of the Athabasca region is only one small piece of the immense scope of this issue…It’s time for the Healing Walk to shed light on other communities, other extraction practices, other bodies of water, and other places…In order to stop the destruction, the healing has to start everywhere.”  Hundreds of healing walk participants would greatly appreciate Nimiipuu, Umatilla, Warm Springs, Coeur d’Alene, and Montana tribal participation and stories of tar sands resistance, so please consider involvement in this significant event.  Expect a WIRT event announcement about the Tar Sands Solidarity Journey soon.

HIGHWAY 95/200 MEGALOADS

As described in previous Wild Idaho Rising Tide dispatches, the Federal Highway Administration determined in mid-February that the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) and megaload hauler Mammoet USA South must produce a more stringent environmental assessment, rather than a categorical exclusion, analysis of the proposed Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive Temporary Overweight Truck Route, likely due to public pressure and attorney and coalition letters [11].  For now, a gravel, “temporary,” wrong-way, Interstate 90 on-ramp, built on a trail between two wetlands, and a lakeside parking lot for megaload layover – both near where previous interchange construction collapsed into the toxic, Superfund sludge-bottomed lake – will not have to withstand three 1.6-million-pound transports of a hydrocracker tripling the tar sands production of a Great Falls, Montana, refinery.  A rapidly approaching recreation and tourism season in the Idaho and Montana Rocky Mountains could crowd these behemoths off area thoroughfares.

Slowed and blocked by WIRT and other groups, Mammoet and ITD are rerouting the cargo toward the northern Idaho reaches of U.S. Highway 95 and Idaho Highway 200, as a solution to the procedural impasse.  After the megaloads rumble out of the Port of Wilma near Lewiston, up the grade, and through Moscow, they would venture over Lake Pend Oreille toward Sandpoint and Montana.  WIRT organized and scheduled four brief and simple, early-April evening meetings/presentations and weekend direct action training sessions in Sandpoint, Plummer, Coeur d’Alene, and Moscow [12].  As WIRT activists eagerly anticipated talking with concerned Sandpoint area residents about possibly impending Mammoet-hauled shipments at the Sandpoint Library on April 2, public meeting plans appeared on the front page of the Sandpoint newspaper on April Fool’s Day and in the Coeur d’Alene Press [13-15].  After one and a half years since the last WIRT (coal train) protest in Sandpoint, we are grateful for local media coverage stating, “Wild Idaho Rising Tide opposes megaloads, contending they would exacerbate climate change due to their links to controversial tar sands oil development in Canada and the proposed [Keystone] XL pipeline.” Continue reading →