Nez Perce Tribe Urges Forest Service to Stop Megaloads

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Tribal members encouraged to peacefully oppose move set for today

The Nez Perce Tribe challenged the U.S. Forest Service on Sunday to use “all legal avenues” to stop a pending megaload shipment from crossing national forest land and said it would not prevent its own members from blocking the load.

In a news release issued on Sunday evening, Nez Perce Tribal Executive Chairman Silas C. Whitman said he was shocked at the audacity of shipping company Omega Morgan, which announced on Friday its plans to begin moving a massive evaporator east on U.S. Highway 12 tonight.  The company has a permit from the Idaho Transportation Department but has not gained approval from the U.S. Forest Service.

Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest Supervisor Rick Brazell has said he won’t authorize the shipments before consulting with the tribe.  But he also said he doesn’t know if he has legal authority to physically block them.

Whitman said the tribe believes the federal agency can and should stop the shipments.

“The Forest Service must not tolerate Omega Morgan’s open defiance of its authority and instead should aggressively assert, in court if necessary, the agency’s decision, so that the Nez Perce Tribe’s unique treaty-based interests and U.S. public’s interest in the national forest and wild and scenic river corridor are fully protected,” he said. Continue reading →

Urgent WIRT Meeting, Possible Monday Megaload Movement

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WIRT Activists and Friends,

URGENT WIRT MEETING

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) is staging a strategizing and planning meeting at the WIRT Activist House at 6 pm on Sunday, August 4!  Participants will discuss tactics for protesting and monitoring tar sands evaporators that could cross Highway 12 in Idaho beginning on Monday night, August 5.  Omega Morgan has attached one of these megaloads to pull and push trucks and staged it for transport in a paved lot at the Port of Wilma, Washington, a few miles downriver from Lewiston, Idaho.  As described in a previous WIRT newsletter, another shipment remains in a large shop at the port.  Please call 208-310-2108 for more information about this WIRT meeting and see the following articles about this emerging situation.  Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction and WIRT organizers are participating in a direct action training for trainers this weekend and will conduct a regional training session soon, to foster effective demonstrations against megaloads, oil and gas drilling/fracking, and the Keystone XL pipeline.  Expect an action alert after the WIRT meeting on Sunday evening…

Earth First! Direct Action Manual

Megaloads Could Go Monday (August 2 Lewiston Tribune)

On Friday, Omega Morgan stated its intentions to start hauling a massive evaporator up Highway 12 to Alberta tar sands operations at 10 pm on Monday, August 5.  The Forest Service “is not likely to try and stop the shipments if the company proceeds without its approval.”  The Idaho Transportation Department issued a permit to Omega Morgan on Friday and advised it to contact the Forest Service and the Federal Highway Administration.  A federal court recently affirmed their authority to review and regulate megaload permits for passage through the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest and the Lochsa and Middle Fork of the Clearwater Wild and Scenic River corridor.  But the Forest Service has only suggested three interim criteria for such megaload transport and has not yet consulted the Nez Perce Tribe, conducted a proposed study of corridor values affected by the shipments, nor established a megaload permit approval process.  Forest Service response to Omega Morgan’s assertions will need Chief Tom Tidwell’s approval.  Opponents and mercenary supporters of megaloads have sent dozens of messages to the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest over the past few weeks.

Update: Can a Mega-Load Make a U-Turn? (July 31/August 3 Boise Weekly)

Editorial: Time to Set Rules of Road for Idaho Megaloads (July 31 Spokesman Review)

Wild Idaho Rising Tide

P.O. Box 9817, Moscow, Idaho 83843

WildIdahoRisingTide.org & on facebook & Twitter

208-301-8039

Smoke Ranch Well Protest 8-2-13

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On Thursday and Friday, August 1 and 2, Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE) and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) arranged carpools from north Idaho and Boise to the current Payette County drilling area, to stage the first, overdue, public, on-site, oil and natural gas drilling protest in Idaho history.  With continent-wide recognition through Earth First! Newswire coverage, even Utah comrades called WIRT and considered participation.  At 3 pm MDT on August 2, friends, family, and neighbors gathered with their fracking/drilling protest signs and banners, cameras and binoculars at the A & W Restaurant/Chevron gas station just north of Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.  These dozen protesters from across the state and country chanted and waved signs at the nearby high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30.  They then followed organizers to the Smoke Ranch well site on Highway 52, from where Alta Mesa Services had moved a drilling derrick to the new ML Investments well pad, soon after the IRAGE/WIRT announcement of this demonstration of outrage.

Along Highway 52, the protesters observed the capped well head and pad of the first directionally drilled natural gas well in the state, located in a floodplain full of standing water, wetlands, riparian areas, and a wildlife refuge, between the Payette River and Big Willow Creek.  The ultimate outcome of the Smoke Ranch well could set a precedent for looming drilling/fracking on and under nearby state lands and waters already leased by Alta Mesa and Snake River Oil and Gas.  From the roadside only a few miles upstream from the City of Fruitland municipal water intake and the Payette/Snake River confluence, IRAGE activists had monitored the well site daily.  On that sunny August afternoon, the first time that many of the demonstrators had seen Idaho oil and gas facilities, Alma Hasse of IRAGE described the prior activity and equipment at the well site, and pointed out the location of a possible diesel fuel or drilling mud spill clean-up that she and Tina Fisher documented on July 21.  Everyone also noticed the close proximity of working ranches and community irrigation canals to the well situated below distantly recognizable sandstone cliffs and bluffs.

At the last stop during this great educational and expressive event, concerned citizens converged along Little Willow Road, to view the derrick and operations of the ML Investments 2-10 well, situated on a private road and property.  No news reporters joined the protesters as they considered, discussed, and learned about the strong, impending possibilities of compromised air and surface and ground water quality, threatened environmental and human health, and jeopardized local agricultural, recreational, and economic productivity, which oil and gas exploration and production of the Hamilton/Willow gas field could impose on the surrounding rural landscape.  Participants talked about a looming third new well since drilling resumed after a few years in June, as well as a proposed pipeline connecting Payette County gas wells to Idaho Power Company’s Langley Gulch natural gas-fired power generation plant near New Plymouth.  As industry and government continue to hide their fracking intentions for the region, which do not require public notice or comments and could spur well treatments soon, several state, county, and city police cruised by or chatted with demonstrators at all three sites visited on that Friday.

Protest at Smoke Ranch Well (July 29 Earth First! Newswire)

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters from across the state and country chant and wave fracking/drilling protest signs at the high-traffic corner of Highways 95 and 30 near Interstate 84 Exit 3 in southwestern Idaho.

Protesters observe the capped well head and pad at the Smoke Ranch site south of Highway 52, the first directionally drilled natural gas well in the state, located in a floodplain full of standing water, wetlands, irrigation canals, riparian areas, and a wildlife refuge, between the Payette River and Big Willow Creek, only a few miles upstream from the City of Fruitland municipal water intake and the Payette/Snake River confluence.

Protesters observe the capped well head and pad at the Smoke Ranch site south of Highway 52, the first directionally drilled natural gas well in the state, located in a floodplain full of standing water, wetlands, irrigation canals, riparian areas, and a wildlife refuge, between the Payette River and Big Willow Creek, only a few miles upstream from the City of Fruitland municipal water intake and the Payette/Snake River confluence.

Continue reading →

Megaloads Could Go Monday

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But Forest Service has yet to give its approval for loads to cross agency land.

Megaloads could begin rolling eastward on U.S. Highway 12 starting Monday, but their fate remains in the legal limbo between state and federal jurisdiction.

The Idaho Transportation Department issued a permit to shipper Omega Morgan on Friday, authorizing the company to begin moving massive water evaporators through Idaho and toward oil fields in Alberta, Canada, starting at 10 pm Monday.  But in an accompanying letter, transportation department administrator Alan Frew advised the company that the U.S. Forest Service and the Federal Highway Administration have jurisdiction to review the permit.

“You should contact these federal agencies,” he wrote.

Omega Morgan President and CEO John McCalla sent a letter to Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest Supervisor Rick Brazell on Friday, stating the company plans to embark on Monday on a four-night trip following the highway from Lewiston to the Idaho/Montana state line at Lolo Pass.  But the agency has not given its approval for the loads to cross national forest land between mileposts 74 and 174.

On Friday, Brazell again said he does not support the loads crossing the forest until agency officials have had time to consult with the Nez Perce Tribe, which opposes megaload shipments.  He said the agency will respond to the company’s letter and the response will need to be approved by Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.

“Until we consult, we are not approving anything from our end,” he said. Continue reading →

WIRT Newsletter: WIRT Song, Missing Megaload, In-Situ Oil Spill, & More

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WIRT SONG

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) offers our exuberant gratitude to benefactor Tom Hansen, composer/performer Roy Zimmerman, and musical guide Jeanne McHale, for the uplifting song created for WIRT in May-June 2013, The Tide Is Rising!  Please share freely and revise as your own anthem, Rising Tide activists and friends.

OMEGA MORGAN EVAPORTORS

Missing Megaload! (July 29 Big Country News Connection)

As Portland Rising Tide and 350 posed and hung a bridge banner declaring “Coal, Oil, Gas: None Shall Pass,” WIRT activists arrived at the Port of Wilma to confront two tar sands megaloads that passed under the same bridge the week before the Summer Heat: Columbia River Climate Action.  Unlike in Portland, a few protesters and a Lewiston Tribune reporter showed up at 3:30 pm on Saturday, July 27.  Everyone else likely assumed that the Forest Service and conservationists would keep these evaporators out of the Highway 12 wild and scenic river corridor, although most of the region had failed to stop similar transports to Alberta tar sands operations.  But the three of hundreds of potential protest participants observed that one of the Omega Morgan shipments was missing!  Did it sneak up Highway 12 unannounced?  We questioned the on-site security guard who refused to answer our queries, searched both the Ports of Wilma and Lewiston, contacted our non-activist allies who rarely work during weekends, and alerted and asked multiple associates around the region.  No one in the Kamiah Nez Perce community had seen the missing megaload.  Like during the 2011-12 ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil invasion of Highway 95, we felt betrayed and abandoned by industry, government, and absent allies and protest participants.

We cringed at the same-day juxtaposition of people downriver giddily stating “None Shall Pass,” as they posed against, rather than directly confronted, fossil fuel perpetrators, perhaps assuaging guilt with ‘photo ops’, while a megaload disappeared before anyone but a few diehards bothered to face it on the frontlines.  As we have worked to instigate for years, we hope that Americans will wake up and fight back in time, meeting megaloads with resistance at the coast and all along the 465-mile trip up the Columbia/Snake rivers to Lewiston area ports.  Our activist allies are still wondering why we have not blockaded Highway 12 yet.  On Monday, July 29, Mia Carlson-Simpson of Big Country News solved the missing megaload mystery with a few phone calls.  The module was in a nearby shop at the Port of Wilma, where presumably a crew is installing its insulation (or reducing its height for interstate overpasses?).  This Thursday, an ally noted that “Omega Morgan may have gone down Highway 95.”  With plenty of unverified or unshared information emerging, we remain vigilant of any megaload movement up Highways 12 or 95, not entirely convinced that the Forest Service will hold the line, that conservationist allies would call for an injunction, or that the police will not continue to reinforce social and environmental injustice.

“An oversized load that was delivered to the Port of Wilma just west of Clarkston a week ago has not been transported out of the region, although some people have asked ‘Did it sneak up Highway 12 last week?’  Activists with Wild Idaho Rising Tide showed up on Saturday, to protest the two loads that were unloaded from their barges on July 22, and discovered that there was only one sitting there.  According to Olga Haley, a spokeswoman for transport company Omega Morgan, the load is being ‘stored inside a building at the Port of Wilma.’  Meanwhile, she adds that there is no other news since the company is working with the U.S. Forest Service and the Idaho Department of Transportation on the permit situation.

The water purification vessels were fabricated in British Columbia, weigh about 320 tons each, and could be the first of at least nine loads that the Oregon-based shipping company wants to move east on U.S. Highway 12 to Montana and then up to Alberta, Canada, to the tar sands.  But the loads can’t move until they meet three interim rules set by the Forest Service to protect the Wild and Scenic Middle Fork Clearwater and Lochsa rivers: no traffic can be fully stopped in the corridor, the loads must pass through the corridor in less than 12 hours, and no physical modification may occur of the highway or adjacent vegetation beyond normal highway maintenance.  Omega Morgan has submitted a revised plan that shows the loads meet two of the three rules, but they would still delay traffic.  (Photo courtesy of Wild Idaho Rising Tide)” Continue reading →

Commissioners Pass Gas and Oil Ordinance with Amendments

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New ordinance reduces 500 foot setback

Payette County Commissioners passed a gas and oil drilling ordinance after a public hearing on Monday at the courthouse.

They heard testimony from Payette County residents, who mostly said the ordinance needed to expand the setback from 200 feet in the new proposed ordinance to the 500 feet that it had been in the previous ordinance.

Several testified that a neighbor who signs a lease allowing drilling to be done on his or her property would force another neighbor to endure the drilling, despite their possible refusal to sign a lease.  They said that 200 feet is not an adequate distance.

New Plymouth resident Tina Fisher said that if one neighbor signs a lease but the other neighbor doesn’t want to, it is unfair to that neighbor.  “Two-hundred feet is woefully inadequate,” Fisher said. Continue reading →

Idaho, Feds at Odds on Megaloads

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State ready to issue permit; U.S. Forest Service applies the brakes, says study and tribal advice needed

At the request of the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD), the U.S. Forest Service is revising one of its interim criteria designed to define and govern the transport of megaloads through national forest land.

But the change won’t make it any easier for the massively oversized shipments to win approval for travel along U.S. Highway 12 as it passes through the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest and its Wild and Scenic River corridors.

The Forest Service is also asking to review megaload applications before permits are awarded by the state and is taking issue with the state’s insistence that it lacks authority to deny the permits.

In February, federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled the Forest Service has authority to review megaload shipments that cross national forest land and pass through the Lochsa and Middle Fork of the Clearwater Wild and Scenic River corridor. Continue reading →

Smoke Ranch Well Protest

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Gas Well with Bluffs

As oil and gas drilling resumed in Payette County this month after a few years, Alta Mesa Services raised a derrick at the Smoke Ranch natural gas well on June 9 [1].  This directionally drilled well – the focus of the intensive Stop the Frack Attack! campaign of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE) during June – embodies the myriad infringements of environmental and human health that conventionally-drilled and hydraulically-fractured (“fracked”) oil and gas wells famously impose [2].  The Smoke Ranch well occupies a floodplain, where operators pumped standing water from the well pad before drilling between the Payette River and Big Willow Creek, within a half-mile of a riparian area/wetland wildlife refuge, and only a few miles upstream from the City of Fruitland municipal water intake and the Payette/Snake River confluence.  Its ultimate outcomes could set a precedent for looming drilling/fracking on and under nearby state lands and waters already leased by Alta Mesa and Snake River Oil and Gas.  IRAGE activists have been monitoring the site daily and, along with other information sources in the southwest Idaho region, have observed multitudes of hidden equipment, transport trailers, drill pipes, and well pads awaiting likely escalating utilization, as well as water for Smoke Ranch operations withdrawn from irrigation canals.  They have recently taken unreleased pictures and videos of several Schlumberger tank trucks covered with radioactive warning placards. Continue reading →

Climate Justice Forum: Mary Ullrich 7-29-13

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The Monday, July 29, Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) welcomes Mary Ullrich of the Paradise Ridge Defense Coalition board.  Mary discusses how the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) tried to control public opinion by presenting false information in its guide to the draft environmental impact statement for the Highway 95 Thorn Creek to Moscow reconstruction project.  She also updates listeners on the current status of ITD and federal review and response to public comments and document revisions.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT live at 92.5 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.

Does Omega Morgan Know a Mega-Secret?

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Marty Trillhaase, Editorial Page Editor, Lewiston

The Lewiston Tribune 7/25/13

Riddle us this, Batman: What does Omega Morgan know that everyone else does not?

The transportation company – at no small expense – navigated two megaloads of equipment manufactured by Ellett Industries up the Columbia and Snake rivers to the Port of Wilma – in anticipation of moving them up U.S. Highway 12 toward the Alberta tar sands.

Which, says Clearwater-Nez Perce National Forest Supervisor Rick Brazell, “is setting us up for a showdown.”

But over what?

If anyone can see any flexibility in Brazell’s recent policy closing U.S. 12 to megaload traffic, please enlighten us.

His authority is rock solid.  It comes from U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill.

So is Brazell’s mandate.  That flows through the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. Continue reading →