Richard Read / the Oregonian
Climate justice activists and tribal members from Umatilla and Warm Springs meet the megaload in December. Photo: Portland Rising Tide
Megaload opponents are taking the Oregon Department of Transportation to court, claiming the agency failed to consider the public interest when it authorized a gigantic shipment bound for Canada’s tar sands.
An Oregon tribal leader and an environmental activist filed a petition for review Tuesday in Marion County Circuit Court, claiming officials didn’t hold hearings or provide opportunities for public comment on an oversize shipment scheduled to depart Umatilla this month.
The petitioners want a judge to direct the Transportation Department to set aside permits until the agency makes “an actual determination of public interest” concerning the shipment. They also request a permanent injunction against such permits until the agency establishes a public process including notices and opportunities for comment.
“We want the judge to order ODOT to consider the public interest,” said petitioner Peter Goodman, a director and founding member of Act on Climate, an Oregon nonprofit working against climate change. “We would hope the judge would send it back to ODOT and say, ‘Correct the deficiency in the permit.’”
The court filing targets the last of three so-called megaloads that Hillsboro trucker Omega Morgan has been trying to haul this winter to Canada’s tar sands, a vast oil-mining complex in northern Alberta. Protesters have attempted to delay the shipments of giant water evaporators, saying they’ll be used to extract bitumen for crude oil in an energy-intensive process that magnifies global warming.
Megaloads are longer than football fields, with rigs and trailers so wide they take up both lanes of two-lane highways and can’t fit under freeway bridges. The loads typically travel at night, pulling over periodically to let traffic pass.
Patrick Cooney, ODOT communications division administrator, declined to comment Tuesday on the court filing. But he said there is no requirement for a public hearing or a public vote on whether a load can move.
“The public interest being served is to facilitate the movement of commerce and freight for the state of Oregon,” Cooney said. “The permitting process for oversize loads is to determine whether the loads can be moved safely without damaging the transportation system. The use of the commodity is not taken into account.”
In their court filings, Goodman and petitioner Carl Sampson, headman-chief of the Walla Walla Tribe, described the public interest more broadly. Sampson, 80 – also known as Chief Yellowbird, or Peo Peo Mox Mox – said megaloads were passing through lands where tribal members have long hunted, fished and gathered traditional foods.
An 1855 treaty reserved tribal rights for these activities within 6.4 million acres of ceded land in what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, Sampson said.
“Even if no accidents occur, machines bound for such widespread environmental destruction desecrate the sacred integrity of the land,” Sampson said. “Healing ceremonies will need to be performed to begin to repair the damage, but no healing ceremony will completely resolve it.”
Goodman, who also founded a group called Albany Against Coal Trains, said he has dedicated years of volunteer work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. He and Sampson said ODOT should have considered the public interest, including climate-change impacts, when deciding whether to grant the latest megaload permit.
Megaloads are not just another oversize industrial cargo, Goodman said.
“They are the tools needed to contribute to the dirtiest industrial energy project in the world,” Goodman said. “Either we rise to the occasion of megaload threats before us, or we participate, albeit passively, in our own extinction.”
An Omega Morgan spokeswoman said Tuesday that the load targeted by the court action is still at the Port of Umatilla, waiting to depart. Another load has reached Choteau, Montana. And the initial load that left Umatilla in early December is in Bonner, Montana, awaiting clear travel weather.
Linwood Laughy, an Idaho activist who tracks the loads, said Tuesday that the megaoload in Bonner has suffered numerous weather and mechanical delays. Omega Morgan initially predicted a 20-day trip.
“Now 70 days from Umatilla, the megaload has traveled 900 miles, averaging 13 miles per day,” Laughy wrote in a bulletin. “In another 300 miles it will reach Canada, and then in 600 more, its tar-sands destination.”
