Highway 12 Megaload Update, Michigan & Oregon Solidarity

Posted on by
1

Weather and road conditions will likely stop the Everett transport and/or a crane from moving WEST on Highway 12 tonight.  Barely under the 16-foot-width limitations for Highway 12 megaloads established by the Forest Service, one or more singular shipments could regretfully move sometime this week or on Saturday, February 8, as originally projected.  Friends of the Clearwater, Idaho Rivers United, and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) are communicating with the Idaho Transportation Department, to obtain more information.  WIRT is working with allies to convince federal agencies to not allow the proposed three Mammoet 1.6-million-pound loads to travel on Highway 95 and Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive.

Climate Justice Forum: Al Smith & Chris Wahmhoff 2-10-14 (website excerpted)

Share Solidarity with Jailed MI CATS

WIRT shares deep respect and sadness with our valiant anti-tar sands comrades.  On Friday, January 31, after a four-day trial of three brave and peaceful female activists, a jury found them guilty of misdemeanor trespassing and felony resisting/obstructing an officer.  Judge Collette’s disdain for the defendants and their supporters refused to allow expert witnesses and documentation and revoked their bond.  The increased police presence in the courtroom on Friday immediately took all three women into custody until their March 5 sentencing of possibly years in jail.  Their acts of love, protection, and courage do not deserve such harsh treatment and felony charges.  Vickie became a great grandmother last week, and Lisa expects a new grandchild this week.  Visit the MI CATS website and facebook pages to find ways to share strength and solidarity with them.  Please send to them handwritten, 4-by-6-inch postcards/index cards without images, mailed to the Ingham County Jail, 640 N. Cedar Street, Mason, MI 48854.  Continent-wide resistance to tar sands, fossil fuels, and unfair corporations and “justice systems” will continue to grow! Continue reading →

Monday Highway 12 Megaload Alert

Posted on by
Reply

Mammoet Truck 2-1-14While Big Oil is hitting the region on all sides with megaloads these days, admired Nez Perce allies have been saying since Wednesday morning, January 29, that shipments hauled by Everett (Emmert that transported ConocoPhillips half coke drums?), not Omega Morgan, will attempt Highway 12 travel on February 8, through the Middle Fork Clearwater/Lochsa river corridor. Local people will assist by contracting their services, like Terry Jackson, the big, bad-tempered guy with the “Keep Idaho Green $$$” sign in Syringa, who raises wires and lines over the highway for thousands of dollars per job.

Groups like Friends of the Clearwater and Idaho Rivers United, who have been submitting ongoing public records requests, conveyed no awareness of this incursion when asked on Friday. The Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee (NPTEC), mostly arrested during August protests, has also said nothing about megaload plans. No one knows if these likely mammoth trucks are heading to purportedly cheap sources of oil and gas in the Alberta tar sands and Bakken shale fields. It is also unclear whether Everett is moving during the day, like the Vietnamese cylinder, or at night. Thus, planning street parties, human barricades, and civil disobedience with Nez Perce warriors, at the Clearwater River Casino or beyond, has been difficult. But people are mad as hell, willing to stand up to and/or chase the next interloper, while expecting tribal police to defend the Nimiipuu people and lands. Continue reading →

Highway 95 Damage South of Moscow 4-2-12

Posted on by
1

0402121258b cropped

Highway 95 Damage South of Moscow 4-2-12 (Wild Idaho Rising Tide photos)

Between April 11, 2011, and March 6, 2012, Mammoet hauled over 70 transports weighing up to 500,000 pounds on U.S. Highways 12 and 95 and Interstate 90 through northern Idaho, between the Port of Lewiston and Lolo or Lookout Pass and into western Montana.  Expensively and dangerously facilitated by the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD), state police, and private contractors, its risky Imperial Oil megaloads imperiled the safety and schedules of travelers, while delaying, confusing, and blocking public highway access and traffic with their 16- to 24-foot, two-lane widths and lengthy, glaring cargoes and convoys.  Transport operations caused personal injury and property damage through numerous accidents and collisions with vehicles, tree branches, and power lines, as they degraded highways with washboard ruts in lane centers, and pummeled saturated road beds, crumbling shoulders, and outdated bridges [1-3].  Concurrent, colossal transportation ventures through the region, imposed by other haulers, crashed into cliffs and impeded public and private emergency services [4, 5].

As Mammoet again targets Highway 95 with the heaviest (1.6-million-pound), longest (474-foot), and widest (27-foot) tar sands megaloads ever to traverse Idaho, perhaps in February 2014, Wild Idaho Rising Tide releases these photos taken heading north like transports on the seven-mile stretch of the highway south of Moscow, Idaho, on April  2, 2012.  They depict washboard grooves in the middle of lanes, rippled center lines and areas, and cracked and stripped pavement layers on Highway 95, all inflicted by Mammoet’s Imperial Oil transports between July 2011 and March 2012.  Most recently – and significantly for water quality along the proposed Mammoet Coeur d’Alene lakeside megaload route – ITD authorized application of 1000 gallons of de-icing fluid of unknown chemical composition, to assist the re-start and passage of an Omega Morgan shipment hindered for weeks by weather and permit complications on the Idaho side of Lost Trail Pass [6]. Continue reading →

Climate Justice Forum: Carol Marsh 1-27-14

Posted on by
Reply

The Monday, January 27, Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) features Montana climate activist Carol Marsh, one of three grandmothers who twice sat down and blockaded an Omega Morgan tars sands megaload in Missoula’s Reserve Street on the nights of January 22 and 24.  71-year-old Carol talks about past and recent Missoula tar sands megaload and pipeline protests, her and our comrades’ associated arrests and citations, Alberta tar sands mining operations, impacts, and regional overlegal shipments, and global climate change.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PST live at 90.3 FM and online, the show covers continent-wide dirty energy developments and climate activism news, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as his KRFP DJ.

Northwest Protests of Omega Morgan-Hauled Tar Sands Megaloads

Posted on by
5

12 Transports, 39 Direct Confrontations, 52 Arrests, 2 Citations

Megaload One: Full Evaporator

1) Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) & Allied Protest & Monitoring: October 22, 2012 (Lewiston/Highway 12, Idaho)

2) WIRT & Allied Monitoring: October 23, 2012 (Highway 12, Idaho)

Mini-Megaloads Two & Three: Cylinders

WIRT Missed: December 3 & 4, 2012 (Highway 12, Idaho)

Megaload Four: Full Evaporator

3-6) Nez Perce Tribe & Allied Protests: August 5 to 8, 2013 (Highway 12, Idaho) 28 Arrests

7) Northern Rockies Rising Tide & Allied Protest: August 12, 2013 (Reserve Street, Missoula, Montana)

Mini-Megaloads Five to Eight: Dismantled Evaporator Outer Parts

8) WIRT & Allied Protest: October 15, 2013 (Washington Street, Moscow/Highway 95, Idaho)

Megaload Nine: Dismantled Evaporator Core

9) WIRT & Allied Protest & Monitoring: November 10, 2013 (Washington Street, Moscow/Highway 95, Idaho)

10) WIRT & Allied Protest & Monitoring: November 11, 2013 (Sherman Avenue, Coeur d’Alene/Interstate 90, Idaho)

11) WIRT & Allied Protest & Monitoring: November 12, 2013 (Front & Bank Streets, Wallace/Interstate 90, Idaho) Continue reading →

Idaho & Montana Tar Sands Megaload Protests! Missoula 1-24-14

Posted on by
1

At 12:30 am on Friday morning, January 24, a convoy of pilot and flagger vehicles, state, county, and city police escorts, and a 804,000-pound transport of tar sands mining equipment hauled by Portland, Oregon area-based Omega Morgan hesitantly rolled down Reserve Street in Missoula, Montana, and ground to a halt.  For a third night, about sixty mostly indigenous people from Missoula, Butte, Helena, and all over Montana and Canada sprang from the sidewalk near Central Avenue and filled the five-lane width of Reserve Street with singing, drumming, and round dancing.  Police respectfully backed off and stood by, letting the ceremony symbolizing solidarity and friendship continue for 10 to 15 minutes, while dozens of the vehicles and workers facilitating ecocide, genocide, and climate chaos idled all around the beautiful circle.  Together with the spirits of the Earth, ancestors, and elders, the strong prayers and actions of the Salish, Cree, Anishinabe, Blackfeet, and Cheyenne people who participated in person or from afar impressed everyone who heard the songs and watched the round dance.  A handful of drummers and singers – Amanda, Charles, Lionel, Q.J., and others – led two rounds of dancing around them, before the joyous blockaders slowly vacated the street.

As police encouraged the protesters to move toward the sidewalk, Charles stepped forward toward the convoy vehicles and police to speak for a few moments.  Three heroic grandmothers and friends, Claudia Brown, Gail Gilman, and Carol Marsh, stayed behind and sat in the road.  Police cited and released Gail and Carol, and arrested, booked, and released Claudia on bail, all on charges of disorderly conduct.  They had also arrested Carol on Tuesday night, when she bravely sat down in front of a megaload, blocking its path.  As the tar sands megaload convoy resumed progress toward the most destructive and expensive, fossil fuel extraction project on Earth, a young Native woman smudged its passage, and drumming, singing, and praying blessed the cool night air with hope that the injustices, devastation, and resulting climate change of tar sands exploitation will soon stop.  After Reserve Street cleared, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) videotaped Missoula city police issuing citations to two of the grandmothers, and interviewed Carol and Gail, to discern and share their motivations for responsibly blockading tar sands supply shipments.  Their courageous acts mark almost four years of similar on-the-ground resistance staged by tribal, climate, and conservation activists in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington since April 2010. Continue reading →

Mega Mess Left at North Fork

Posted on by
6

State highway signs tell travelers that Idaho is too great to litter.

But apparently not all users – or managers – of Idaho roadways have gotten the message.

In a roadside pullout north of Salmon that drains to the North Fork of the Salmon River, a giant rig loaded with oil field equipment bound for the tar sands of Canada sat for two weeks.  After it was gone, several locals and environmentalists raised concerns about what was left behind.

The megaload got moving again with some help from the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD), which applied 1,000 gallons of de-icer on ice at the pullout, to help get the load moving again.

News of the state’s use of de-icer along a stream with designated critical habitat for threatened fish, such as Chinook salmon, surfaced earlier this week after the megaload, hauled by Oregon shipper Omega Morgan, crossed Lost Trail Pass and entered Montana.

The 901,000-pound load of General Electric equipment had been parked in a pullout on U.S. Highway 93 North near Gibbonsville, waiting for proper permits and cooperative weather on the last leg of a weeks-long journey through Idaho that saw it cut through such cities as Arco, Leadore, and Salmon. Continue reading →

Idaho & Montana Tar Sands Megaload Protests! Missoula 1-23-14

Posted on by
Reply

20140123_003115

A smaller and faster mystery megaload, transported by Action Specialized of Lynden, Washington, on the same route as the Omega Morgan-hauled loads, moved on Wednesday night, January 22-23, from Lolo through Missoula to the Bonner Town Pump Truck Plaza by early Thursday morning.*  Because it is also headed to Alberta to expand tar sands mining, eight brave protesters, including three drummers and two children, staged an action to temporarily halt the destruction of boreal forests and bogs and indigenous life ways and health that this ‘mini-megaload’ will impose.  With only one Missoula police car in sight and both lanes of Reserve Street open to regular traffic, the tribal and climate activists stopped vehicles with the street light for the Reserve Street crosswalk between Central and Kent Streets, near C.S. Porter Middle School.  At about 12:30 am, the megaload convoy was traveling slightly slower than the normal speed of about 40 miles per hour, as the front pilot vehicles paused and the following oversize transport without highway patrol escorts slowed down almost to a stop.  Instead of dangerously spreading across the five-lane street to block all traffic, the eight protesters prepared to round dance on one side of the road.  Suddenly, the evaporator, about a third of the size of the Omega Morgan cargoes, drove around the blockade into the oncoming traffic lanes!  Police cars with flashing lights passed after the overlegal load and support vehicles, skirting the swiftly unfolding scene where no one was injured or arrested.

* Missoula Woman Arrested for Blocking Megaload; Equipment Reaches Bonner (January 22 Missoulian)

Tuesday to Thursday Missoula Megaload Blockades, Round Dances, and Arrests

Posted on by
Reply

Idaho & Montana Tar Sands Megaload Protests! Missoula 1-22-14 (January 22 Wild Idaho Rising Tide photos)

Montana, Idaho, and Washington tribal and climate activists are meeting again for two more Missoula tar sands megaload protests at the Rosauers at Reserve and South Streets, at 12 midnight on Wednesday/Thursday, January 22-23, and Thursday/Friday, January 23-24!

********

Montana Indian Peoples Action, along with Blue Skies Campaign, Northern Rockies Rising Tide, Spokane Rising Tide, and Wild Idaho Rising Tide, protested, prayed, and round-danced against a “megaload,” a colossal piece of tar sands processing equipment that Omega Morgan hauled on Reserve Street through Missoula, Montana, on Wednesday morning, January 22 [1-4].  Bringing together residents of Missoula and other communities in Montana, Idaho, and Washington affected by tar sands transportation projects, the approximately 50 protesters stood in solidarity with the Nez Perce and Shoshone-Bannock tribes in Idaho, the Confederated Umatilla and Warm Springs tribes in Oregon, and especially the First Nations people in Canada, who oppose tar sands mining and its pollution and devastation of their ancestral homelands in present-day Alberta.

Exploitation of bitumen oil deposits drives the largest, most environmentally destructive, industrial operation on Earth.  The groups involved in Wednesday’s protest of Omega Morgan-hauled evaporators and heat exchangers, used in-situ/steam assisted gravity drainage extraction of tar sands, expressed their deep concerns about the impacts of tar sands development on global climate, air and water quality, and human, wildlife, and ecosystem health.  Like ordinary citizens throughout North America who prefer clean, sustainable energy, not dirty fossil fuel production, they can no longer ignore the irreversible harms imposed by the oil, gas, coal, and tar sands industries. Continue reading →

WIRT Newsletter: Megaload Calls to Action on Tuesday in Moscow, Missoula, & Beyond

Posted on by
2

No Idaho Megaload Bond

On January 3, 2014, the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) issued a permit for a second Omega Morgan-hauled oversize tar sands equipment load to travel across southern and eastern Idaho, from the Homedale area to Lost Trail Pass [1].  Dissimilar to Oregon and Montana megaload policies but like the prior first of three such shipments, bound for mining operations in northeastern Alberta, Canada, the state did not require a bond from Omega Morgan, to offset possible accidents and damages to Idaho taxpayer-financed, public highways, bridges, and associated structures [2].  Neither did Idaho mandate reimbursement by the shipper of additional costs borne by the state agency, including extra administrative expenses that have previously spurred the legislature to raise permitting fees.  These massive transports, composed of three pull and push trucks, several trailers, and a huge evaporator core/heat exchanger, weigh between 800,000 and 900,000 pounds, stretch out to 376 feet long, crowd both sides of 24-foot-wide, two-lane highways, and tower up to 19 feet, too high to fit under 16-foot-tall interstate overpasses.  Traveling through foggy farmlands, icy river canyons, and over snowy mountain passes, what could possibly go wrong [3]?

Ongoing Megaload-Inflicted Damages

In northern Idaho, megaloads have imperiled the safety and schedules of travelers, delayed and blocked traffic with their 16- to 24-foot widths and lengthy convoys, impeded public and private emergency services, caused personal injury and property damage through numerous collisions with vehicles, power lines, cliffs, and tree branches, degraded highways with washboard ruts in lane centers, and pummeled saturated road beds, crumbling shoulders, and outdated bridges [4].  Citizens concerned about the lax state oversight and myriad impacts of these overlegal loads, who have monitored, documented, and protested dangerous convoy practices and conditions, have additionally faced unwarranted targeting, surveillance, intimidation, harassment, and arrest by state troopers and county and city police sworn to serve public safety, but who instead protect corporate interests that challenge Idahoans’ civil liberties and risk the health and wellbeing of people, places, and the planet [5].

Omega Morgan on Six Scenic Byways

If Idaho, according to Karen Ballard of the Idaho Department of Commerce, is the “scenic byway state,” why is ITD allowing hauling companies like Omega Morgan, Mammoet, and other extreme energy facilitators to impact our most cherished routes with repeated, heavy loads on older, decrepit infrastructure, particularly during harsh, brittle winter months [6]?  During their forays across southern Idaho, Omega Morgan transports trampled two miles of the Owyhee Uplands Backcountry Byway on Idaho Highway 78, six miles of the Oregon Trail Backcountry Byway and 62 miles of the Peaks to Craters Byway on U.S. Highway 20, which also traverses or abuts 21 miles of Craters of the Moon National Monument [7].  In eastern Idaho, almost the entire megaload route consists of not only scenic but historically significant routes: 105 miles of the Sacajawea Historic Byway and two miles of the Lewis and Clark Backcountry Byway on Idaho Highway 28, and 46 miles of the Salmon River Scenic Byway on U.S. Highway 93.  Of the 476 miles that tar sands convoys rumble over in southern and eastern Idaho, almost half – 223 miles – cover these federally designated highways.  Idaho could not find a swifter way to dissuade visitors and new residents or to reduce tourism and recreation revenues to the state coffers than to transform beautiful byways into industrial corridors for dirty energy extraction and transportation. Continue reading →