URGENT ALERT: We just received notice (at 6:30 pm!) from the Idaho Transportation Department that Mullen Trucking is moving a megaload on Highway 12 tonight (Thursday, January 3). Please see the following, previous description and meet at 9 pm at the corner of Second and Washington Streets in Moscow to monitor and protest this likely Alberta-bound shipment! Call 208-301-8039 for carpool arrangements to Lewiston…

Megaload End of the (Industrial) World

Displaying its usual disregard for traveler safety over a holiday weekend and dangerous winter weather conditions, the Idaho Transportation Department has issued yet another permit for an oversized shipment on U.S. Highway 12 on Thursday night, January 3. A 163-foot-long truck will transport a generator skid from the Port of Lewiston across Idaho to the Montana border and likely to Alberta between 10 pm on Thursday and 5:30 am on Friday. The almost 17-foot tall, 243,000-pound shipment will crowd tight road curves and narrow two lanes with its 15 foot width, and will delay traffic on U.S. Highway 95 as it travels in the wrong direction near the Spalding bridge.

ITD released information to media outlets announcing this Highway 12 megaload without disclosing its ownership or destination. However, the transport company, Mullen Trucking LP, bases its operations and fleet yard just south of Calgary, Alberta (http://www.mullentrucking.com/index.html ). The flagging/escort company, Red Wolf Traffic Control of Lapwai, located near the administrative core of the Nez Perce Tribe, has escorted cargo hauled by Nickel Brothers for Weyerhaeuser and by Omega Morgan for Sunshine Oilsands, all bound for destructive Alberta resource extraction ventures. According to its approved traffic control plan and list of designated turnouts, Red Wolf intends to provide three leap-frogging flagging teams, roadside lamps around flaggers, three pilot car escorts, two flashing sign boards reading “Wide Load Ahead”, and a clearance height measuring pole.

As climate activists, we cannot civilly tolerate this creeping, fossil-fuel-facilitating industrialization of the only wild and scenic river corridor through the largest wildlands complex in the lower 48 states, especially now that Port of Lewiston staff are luring Bakken oil field suppliers to this and other Idaho routes ( as North Dakota oil increasingly and precariously flows by train to West Coast ports ( Please join Wild Idaho Rising Tide and our allies at 9 pm on Thursday evening, January 3, to monitor and protest yet another imperialistic industrial invasion of our rural homelands. Meet at the corner of Second and Washington streets in Moscow with video and audio recorders and cameras and plenty of warm, water-proof attire, to confront the latest machine in the garden, as the purported 3 am Friday solstice end of the world approaches. Call 208-301-8039 for carpooling information. http://wildidahorisingtide.org/2012/12/13/bakken-oil-field-equipment-on-idaho-roads/ ), http://earthfix.opb.org/energy/article/oil-trains-on-the-rise-in-the-northwest/ ).

Contact: Helen Yost, Wild Idaho Rising Tide wild.idaho.rising.tide@gmail.com 208-301-8039