<div><a href="http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_24375452-71f1-11df-beb6-001cc4c03286.html">http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_24375452-71f1-11df-beb6-001cc4c03286.html</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font size="6">Roads aren't wide enough for big rigs, Idaho outfitter, writer says</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div>By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian | Posted: Monday, June 7, 2010 6:00 am</div>
<div>
<p>Tape measure in hand, Linwood Laughy took a drive last week up the Lochsa River from his home near Kooskia, Idaho.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>He failed.</p>
<p>"From a physics standpoint, it doesn't seem possible," Laughy said.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>Last week the couple launched a website, <a href="http://www.fightinggoliath.org/">www.fightinggoliath.org</a>, 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</p>
<p>their neck of the Idaho woods. Hence the tape measure.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>The company was asked by the Idaho Transportation Department to try again.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"That load, if you're dead center in the road, has got less than 6 inches' clearance," Laughy said.</p>
<p>Never mind the road shoulders, which in some cases aren't shoulders at all.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>Then there are the rock faces that the travel plan calls for the loads to swing away from.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"It's insane," he concluded. "We're going to have a truck in the river."</p>
<p>And what do you do with a 375,000-pound chunk of steel in the river?</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>state commitments described in a corridor management plan have not been met."</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>Nobody is planning this, Laughy emphasized. "This is reality."</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>"They'll say, ‘For whom? For ExxonMobil? I don't think so.' "</p>
<p>Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at <a href="mailto:kbriggeman@missoulian.com">kbriggeman@missoulian.com</a>.</p>
<p>------------------------------------------</p>
<p>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</p></div>