[Vision2020] Hwy 12 Big Loads: "Roads aren't wide enough for big rigs, Idaho outfitter, writer says"

Ted Moffett starbliss at gmail.com
Sat Jun 12 14:06:08 PDT 2010


http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_24375452-71f1-11df-beb6-001cc4c03286.html

Roads aren't wide enough for big rigs, Idaho outfitter, writer says

By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian | Posted: Monday, June 7, 2010 6:00 am

Tape measure in hand, Linwood Laughy took a drive last week up the Lochsa
River from his home near Kooskia, Idaho.

He tried to imagine a truck hauling a mammoth load of equipment up the
winding mountain road, as a couple of mammoth oil companies foresee
happening in coming weeks and months.

He failed.

"From a physics standpoint, it doesn't seem possible," Laughy said.

A writer, outfitter and interpretive guide, Laughy is a longtime resident of
the upper Clearwater River Valley in Idaho, as is his wife, Borg
Hendrickson.

They publish "Clearwater Country" a travelers' guide to the route from
Lewiston, Idaho, to Missoula. Laughy will be in Missoula later this month
for a book reading/signing of his new novel, "The Fifth Generation: The Nez
Perce Trail."

Last week the couple launched a website, www.fightinggoliath.org, to marshal
information about the big rig transportation projects. It's at least the
third one to go online in recent months that deal with the issue, which
Hendrckson and Laughy feel will have a profound effect on

their neck of the Idaho woods. Hence the tape measure.

ConocoPhillips has four loads worth of immense coke drums it would like to
transport, two at a time, from the Port of Lewiston up U.S. Highway 12 to a
refinery in Billings. It wants to start as soon as possible after a bridge
reconstruction project east of Lewiston is completed, a project with a
deadline of Monday.

Imperial Oil, Canada's largest petroleum company and one that's controlled
by U.S.-based ExxonMobil, has a much-discussed plan to haul more than 207
oversized loads up the Clearwater and Lochsa to the Kearl oil/tar sands
project in northeastern Alberta.

The South Korea-fabricated modules, which will separate the goopy oil
product of bitumen from sand and water, are due to start arriving by barge
at the Port of Lewiston this summer.

Both oil companies are waiting on oversized load permits from the Idaho and
Montana transportation departments. Imperial Oil's proposal was subject to
an environmental assessment in Montana but not in Idaho.

MDT is still assessing the thousands of messages from the public it received
before the 30-day comment period ended on May 14. Director Jim Lynch said
Thursday there could be a decision by mid-June. There was no word by week's
end on the Montana department's review of the smaller-scale ConocoPhillips
permit application.

***

In most places, the highway along the Lochsa River is 22 or 23 feet wide,
said Laughy, who filed a freedom of information request to get
ConocoPhillips' initial travel plan and found it "pretty atrocious."

The company was asked by the Idaho Transportation Department to try again.

Instead of trailers, the ConocoPhillips-hired moving company will use
elaborate dollies to transport its four loads. The dollies' wheels will span
18 feet, Laughy said. The drums themselves are 29 feet wide.

"Here's the deal. You've got 22 feet in some of these places and almost a
sheer drop-off to the river," he said. "The fog line may be zero inches out
to a foot on the shoulder, which in lots of places is, like, four or five
inches of crushed rock."

If the truck driver is in the exact middle of the road, he said, the wheels
of the dollies will be no more than 2 1/2 feet from the edge of the highway.
To get over Fish Creek Bridge at milepost 120, the moving company would add
extra dollies and a different configuration, making the wheel base 21 feet,
1 inch.

"That load, if you're dead center in the road, has got less than 6 inches'
clearance," Laughy said.

Never mind the road shoulders, which in some cases aren't shoulders at all.

"In lots of places you can stand on the fog line and spit in the river,"
Laughy said. "This isn't just one place or two places. This is for miles."

Then there are the rock faces that the travel plan calls for the loads to
swing away from.

"They say they can ‘crab' these loads if they get zero clearance, but all
this time they have to average 15 to 20 mph" to avoid holding up traffic
more than the Idaho-mandated 15 minutes.

"It's insane," he concluded. "We're going to have a truck in the river."

And what do you do with a 375,000-pound chunk of steel in the river?

"You don't call the local wrecker. There isn't a good answer. The crane at
the Lewiston port can't even pick these things up. That's why they have to
slide them off the barge.

"I suppose somebody has a big enough crane, maybe in Denver. But what kind
of load will that put on the highway to fish that thing out?"

***

Maybe this wouldn't be a big deal in other cases or on other rivers, Laughy
said. But he's one of the many who has a love affair with the Lochsa and
stakes his livelihood to the visitors it attracts.

He embraces its status as the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway and one of the
nation's 27 All-American Roads, as designated by the U.S. Federal Highway
Administration.

In a recent letter to Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, who's on record as a supporter
of expanding the shipment opportunities at the Port of Lewiston, Laughy and
Hendrickson pointed out that the management plan for the scenic byway lists
the highest priority as "ensuring the public safety while maintaining the
intrinsic qualities of the byway."

Federal regulations address the potential de-designation of Scenic Byways
and All-American Roads when, their letter noted, "it is determined that the
local and/or

state commitments described in a corridor management plan have not been
met."

Hendrickson and Laughy wrote that in light of the plan to convert the road
into "an industrial heavy-duty truck route," "we wish to know what you are
doing to protect the (scenic byway) and the local travel/tourism industry
that the (byway) and its Corridor Management Plan are designed to enhance."

Laughy said Friday he'd had no response to the letter from the governor's
office. Jon Hanian, Otter's press secretary, said the governor was en route
Friday to Tokyo for a 12-day China trade mission.

***

There's another issue that Laughy says he's tried to get people on both
sides of the transport issue to understand. The turnouts that the big rigs
will rely on to clear traffic are popular parking spots on the Clearwater
and Lochsa, for hunters and fishermen, travelers and locals who want to go
down to the river. When the salmon are running, workers get off swing shift
at the Potlatch Mill after dark and head for the river, often parking inches
from the side of the road.

"Imagine this scene, and this happens all the time," Laughy said. "There's a
turnout at what's called No. 1 Beach that the (transport trucks) really
need, otherwise they've got a 10-mile stretch. It's one of the most popular
beaches on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater. People park there and
sometimes they build a campfire on the beach and they drink beer. Sometimes
they even sleep down there."

Nobody is planning this, Laughy emphasized. "This is reality."

They are within their rights to park at the turnout, he said. If the Idaho
State Police escorting the big rigs get involved, are they going to insist
that someone who's been drinking beer move his or her vehicle?

"They'll say, ‘For whom? For ExxonMobil? I don't think so.' "

Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at
kbriggeman at missoulian.com.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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