Category: Tar Sands

11.8.13 — Wild Ida­ho Ris­ing Tide (WIRT) offers its hum­ble grat­i­tude for all of the coura­geous Nez Perce trib­al mem­bers and region­al sup­port­ers who so suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed and scut­tled the Omega Mor­gan plan to move a 644,000-pound evap­o­ra­tor to Alber­ta tar sands oper­a­tions through the wild rivers, forests, and canyons of the Nez Perce home­land.  After cross­ing Ida­ho over four nights and meet­ing the most pas­sion­ate resis­tance ever wit­nessed by such an indus­tri­al con­voy, the mega­load reached High­way 12 mile­post 4, just over Lolo Pass in Mon­tana, at 5:30 am on Fri­day morn­ing, August 8.  Ide­al­ly, the Ida­ho Rivers United/Nez Perce injunc­tion request­ed on Thurs­day may take effect this week for the Lochsa-Clear­wa­ter wild and scenic riv­er cor­ri­dor in Ida­ho.  We have heard that anoth­er eight loads are now head­ed down the Wash­ing­ton coast toward the Port of Wilma, so we are call­ing on all West Coast/Columbia Riv­er activists to report their obser­va­tions of these ship­ments.

Accord­ing to the Mon­tana Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and its issued mega­load per­mit, the mod­ule can­not trav­el in the state on Fri­days or Sat­ur­days and will move from its cur­rent loca­tion to the Bon­ner truck stop on Mon­day night, August 12.  North­ern Rock­ies Ris­ing Tide (NRRT), No Ship­ments Net­work, All Against the Haul, and oth­er anti-mega­load activists sent an alert and are orga­niz­ing a Mon­day night sol­i­dar­i­ty protest.  They coor­di­nat­ed an action plan­ning meet­ing on Sat­ur­day after­noon and are ask­ing that, if you can help with orga­niz­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Mon­day action, please con­tact NRRT as soon as pos­si­ble by email at northernrockiesrisingtide@gmail.com or through the phone num­ber post­ed in the con­tact sec­tion of the NRRT web­site.

Thanks to every­one in Ida­ho and Mon­tana for your ongo­ing cli­mate, tar sands, and indige­nous rights activism.  We urge brave, fel­low activists in Mon­tana to rise up against this esca­lat­ing Big Oil inva­sion.  WIRT will send you mega­load issue updates as time­ly as pos­si­ble from the road.

Wild Ida­ho Ris­ing Tide

P.O. Box 9817, Moscow, Ida­ho 83843

WildIdahoRisingTide.org & on face­book and Twit­ter

208–301-8039

6th August 2013

 

Near­ly 150 mem­bers of the Nez Perce Nation were joined by Idle No More, Wild Ida­ho Ris­ing Tide (WIRT), and oth­ers in a block­ade of High­way 12 in Ida­ho for three hours late last night to stop a mega­load car­ry­ing tar sands equip­ment.

While most peo­ple stood on the edges of the road to sup­port the block­aders, the man­i­fes­ta­tion includ­ed about 50 peo­ple on the High­way stop­ping traf­fic, and was the longest block­ade since the begin­ning of the mega­loads ship­ments.

The over­sized water evap­o­ra­tor had received one per­mit, but bypassed approval by  the U.S. For­est Ser­vice and Fed­er­al High­way Admin­is­tra­tion. The For­est Ser­vice even raised objec­tions, but the Ore­gon-based ship­per Omega Mor­gan tried to slip the mega­load through unno­ticed. Through the impor­tant activism of Wild Ida­ho Ris­ing Tide and oth­ers, how­ev­er, the mega­load was locat­ed eas­i­ly and tracked. 

Judg­ing by its posi­tion, the mega­load is set to trav­el across Nez Perce ances­tral land and a Wild and Scenic Cor­ri­dor soon, so the trib­al mem­bers decid­ed to take direct action rather than sit around and wait for an injunc­tion.

In a news release, the Nez Perce stat­ed their oppo­si­tion “based on impacts to treaty-reserved resources, trib­al com­merce and gov­ern­men­tal func­tions, fed­er­al­ly-pro­tect­ed his­toric and cul­tur­al resources and Nez Perce nation­al land­marks locat­ed along U.S. 12, and trib­al mem­ber health and wel­fare,””

“I don’t look at this as a sym­bol­ic issue,” explained Silas Whit­man, chair­man of the Nez Perce Tribe. “Oth­er­wise, we’d just issue a press state­ment, put up a few signs and just let it go. No. We’ve run out of time and ini­tia­tives. So that leaves us with dis­obe­di­ence, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.”

Whit­man was arrest­ed along with more than a dozen block­aders from Idle No More and WIRT after police broke through the block­ade by dri­ving a police car straight through the group of peo­ple. Police used the usu­al tac­tics to break up the block­ade, threat­en­ing peo­ple with mace, push­ing activists, sep­a­rat­ing par­ents from chil­dren, and so on.

Accord­ing to WIRT’s face­book page, “This block­ade last­ed longer than any oth­er region­al mega­load obstruc­tion since the first tar sands extrac­tion mod­ules rolled from Lewis­ton area ports on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2011. Peo­ple are talk­ing about fur­ther block­ades on upcom­ing nights, per­haps in Kami­ah.”

Stay tuned!