[Vision2020] "Put it in 'Park'" by George Ocheenski

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of The Missoula Independent at:

 

 
<http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/put-it-in-park/Content?oid=129
3489>
http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/put-it-in-park/Content?oid=1293
489

 

With special thanks to a friend a Vision 2020 subscriber for providing it
and especially to George Ochenski.

 

 

Put it in "Park"

Idaho judge nixes high and wide loads

By George Ochenski  8-25-10

 

Concerned citizens, business owners and recreationists were dancing in the
streets this week when Idaho District Judge John Bradbury issued a ruling
that overturns the plan to ship oversize loads of oil equipment up narrow,
twisting roads through Idaho and Montana.  In what is undoubtedly the first,
but not the last, lawsuit against this hair-brained idea, the scales of
justice have tilted, for once, against the power of the multi-national oil
conglomerates.

 

The plan, by Conoco-Phillips and Exxon-Mobil, would turn Hwy 12, which is a
federally-designated Wild and Scenic Highway, into a permanent industrial
corridor.  While it would impact tens of thousands of residents and
visitors, the sole beneficiaries are the profits of the oil companies who
seek to trim transportation costs by shipping the enormous equipment from
Korea and Japan, where it is manufactured, up the Columbia River to the Port
of Lewistown.  From there, it would be loaded onto huge, multi-axle trucks
to move the 300-ton loads up the winding road that follows the Clearwater
and Lochsa Rivers up Lolo Pass and into Montana.

 

The monster loads would then follow the serpentine road down to Lolo, along
the Bitterroot River to Missoula, and then up the Blackfoot River.  Exxon's
equipment would follow the rural two-lanes of the Rocky Mountain Front to
Alberta and the Conoco-Phillips loads would take similar rural roadways to
Laurel's refineries.

 

While the plan sparked fierce resistance from those who live, work and
recreate on the river corridors, Idaho's Governor "Butch" Otter and
Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer earned "Lapdogs of Industry" awards for
cheerleading the project onward, ignoring their own citizenry and lauding
the millions of dollars the proposals would supposedly generate.

 

Both governors, having already drawn the conclusion that the project was a
done deal, abdicated leadership and left it up to their respective
departments of transportation to mollify the angry citizens.  By law, such
projects in Montana require an analysis of potential environmental effects.
But instead of doing a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement, Gov.
Schweitzer assured Montanans that a minimal environmental analysis would
suffice since this was a "one time deal."  Idaho, which has no statute
requiring environmental review, simply ignored the very real possibility of
the damages that could occur during the transportation of the huge loads up
narrow river corridors and over treacherous mountain passes and issued
Conoco-Phillips a permit.

 

The comment period for Montana's minimal environmental analysis drew
thousands of responses from all over the state, nation and world.  But Jim
Lynch, the director of Montana's Department of Transportation, haughtily
announced that since 6,000 of those responses came as form letters from the
Natural Resources Defense Council, they would be counted as a single
comment, further enraging concerned citizens.

 

The issue came to a head when three brave Idahoans, Linwood Laughey, his
wife Borg Hendrikson and Peter Grubb, owner of the River Dance Lodge, took
the Idaho Department of Transportation (IDT) to court.  In an initial
victory, Judge Bradbury refused to throw the suit out as requested by the
state agency and ordered a hearing on Monday of this week.  By late Tuesday
afternoon, Bradbury issued his decision - and it's a doozey.

 

In his intelligent and thoughtful ruling,( available at
http://www.lmtribune.com/filehub/linked/ORDER-Laugh-1282694010.pdf),

Judge Bradbury sided with virtually every point contested by the plaintiffs
where public safety, convenience and potential problems were concerned.  As
for the Idaho Department of Transportation, well, Bradbury gave them credit
for doing a thorough job of determining the impacts of the heavy loads on
highways and bridges, but slammed the agency because "its failure to address
the 'inevitable' accident or breakdown that could shut down Highway 12 for
days or weeks overlooks the quintessential disaster and its effects on the
users of Highway 12 that Emmert [the shipping company] itself forecasts as
possible."

 

In a replay of the recent BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf, the shipping
company acknowledged that the roadway could collapse, equipment could break
down or the loads could wind up falling into the Lochsa River.  To retrieve
such an enormous weight from the narrow river valley would require a 500-ton
crane, which needs at least a 45 x 45-foot pad to operate.  Not only didn't
the agency have a plan for such contingencies, there are very few areas
along the long route that are wide enough to accommodate such equipment.
And Idaho's own regulations require any such over-size load permits to limit
traffic blockages to 10 minutes or less - a requirement the agency simply
ignored and on which the judge harshly, but correctly, based much of his
opinion.

 

Considering there's only one road down the river corridor for residents or
visitors to use in the case of medical emergencies, road blockages are not
merely inconveniences, but hold very real life and death consequences.  As
plaintiff Borg Hendrikson wrote of her own experience: "Early one morning
about three years ago I went into anaphylactic shock.  If my husband hadn't
been able to get me to the Clearwater Valley Emergency Room very quickly, I
could have died. Waiting 15 minutes or more for Exxon-Mobil or
Conoco-Philips to clear their wide loads from the highway, might have been
fatal for me."

 

"This is the 'Mouse that Roared,' 'David and Goliath' and 'Avatar' all
rolled into one," said plaintiff Linwood Laughey of the decision, adding:
"We must remember that the thousands of citizens involved in this effort to
protect their personal and family safety, their businesses and their
lifestyles are confronting some of the largest international corporations in
the world."

 

This stunning court victory should be a wake-up call to both Governor
Schweitzer and the Montana Department of Transportation that these narrow
rural roads are wholly inadequate for use as industrial corridors.  Instead
of spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars in court battles to defend
the profit-driven demands of multi-national oil conglomerates, Schweitzer
and MDOT should do the right thing to protect Montanans and their
environment and summarily deny the permits.

 

 

Seeya round town, Moscow.

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

"It's not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we
gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we
remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice
that gives us integrity."

 

- Francis Bacon, Sr.

 

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