New West Series

Standing in the Way: How One Idaho Couple Plans to Stop Big Oil’s Big Rigs, Part 2

By Steve Bunk, 10-08-10

	U.S. Highway 12, the proposed route over the Lolo Pass to Canadian oil fields, parallels the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, the Nez Perce National Historic Trail, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and two rivers designated "Wild and Scenic" by Congress. Rigs on the road carrying equipment 24-feet-wide and up to 300-feet-long could weigh 500,000 pounds.

In Part One, Lin Laughy and his wife Borg Hendrickson described their alarm in the spring of 2010 regarding plans by the state of Idaho and oil companies to use U.S. Highway 12 through north-central Idaho to Montana as a permanent “high and wide” corridor for trucking oversized loads of mining equipment to projects in Montana and Canada. Through this spring and summer, the couple, who are longtime area residents and tourism business owners, began a people’s campaign to raise awareness of the issue. The Idaho Supreme Court is now deliberating the case. Part Two of this report chronicles the legal tussle, in which Laughy, Hendrickson and local tourism operator Peter Grubb are the plaintiffs.

“We had exhausted all other possibilities aside from litigation,” Borg Hendrickson said.

She was talking about the decision she and her husband, Lin Laughy, made earlier this year to join a lawsuit against the Idaho Department of Transportation (ITD) and ConocoPhillipps concerning whether permits should be issued to allow the oil company to truck mega-loads of mining equipment along pristine Highway 12 over Lolo Pass into Montana. “We had been gathering more and more information, and building a stronger and stronger sense of how wrong turning this scenic byway into an industrial corridor would be,” she said.

Hendrickson and Laughy work in tourism, north-central Idaho’s only growth industry. He conducts heritage tours and they operate a small publishing company that has produced several books, including a guidebook they wrote for the region that sold about 100,000 copies. They also are part-owners in a decorated apparel business in nearby Kamiah, Idaho. The third plaintiff in the legal proceedings is Peter Grubb, a prominent tour operator and owner of the River Dance Lodge and resort.

Highway 12 parallels the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, the Nez Perce National Historic Trail, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and two rivers designated “Wild and Scenic” by Congress, the Middle Fork of the Clearwater and the Lochsa. In a 2006 management plan for the corridor posted on ITD’s website, Laughy found that in 2003, tourism produced revenues of more than $149 million and provided about 5,000 jobs in north-central Idaho.

By contrast, the other oil company that intends to use the highway for trucking mega-equipment, Imperial Oil, which is principally owned by ExxonMobil, has said that about 200 shipments it plans over the route generate more than $10 million in area revenue. Laughy pointed out that even a 10 percent drop in tourism would lose at least $15 million in one year. In Peter Grubb’s affidavit for the district court lawsuit, he indicated that his guests and diners had complained over the past year about excessive construction noise and that the lodge’s business was being damaged.

Another major concern of area residents: Emergency vehicles could be blocked by mega-rigs traveling between turnouts at night. For many miles east of Kooskia, Highway 12 is the only access route for people seeking medical care.

BORG HENDRICKSON

LIN LAUGHY

The legal battle began on Aug. 16, when the plaintiffs asked an Idaho district court for a temporary restraining order of the Conoco shipments, which ITD already had announced would begin Aug. 18. The restraining order was issued Aug. 17. ConocoPhillips requested that the district court expedite a date to hear the case in Lewiston.

That request was granted, but just three days before the Aug. 23 hearing was held, Idaho Division of Motor Vehicles administrator Alan Frew issued a memorandum that authorized permits to transport contractor Emmert International for the shipments. In his document, Frew stated that public comments and a petition with 1,700 signatures organized by Laughy and Hendrickson had been considered, but he called the public’s concerns about the effects on tourism and access to the road for medical emergencies “subjective.”

On Aug. 24, District Court Judge John Bradbury issued an order reversing the permit, in which he expressed a strong suspicion that the state’s decision to grant the permits had been made long before Aug. 20, perhaps even before Conoco’s drums were delivered to Lewiston in May, or before the public was aware enough of the issue to comment on it.

Conoco and the state appealed Bradbury’s decision to the Idaho Supreme Court, which again responded to a request from the company for a court date much sooner than the wait of months that most cases experience. The proceedings were set for Oct. 1.

On Sept. 29, two days before the Supreme Court hearing, a fuel tanker traveling on Highway 12 failed to negotiate a curve and hit an embankment, spilling an estimated 7,500 gallons of diesel about 50 feet from the Lochsa River. Not the first such accident on the byway, it underscored questions of public and environmental safety that were to become part of the Supreme Court hearing on Conoco’s proposed four mega-shipments.

The audience in the Supreme Court chambers in Boise Oct. 1 included a disproportionate number of people with long, gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Justice Jim Jones quickly posed a question that went to the heart of how long oil companies have planned to use the highway as an industrial corridor. “What gave ConocoPhillips the inkling that they could go ahead and move their stuff to Lewiston?” he asked.

Lawrence Allen, representing the state, replied that Emmert International had gone to “extraordinary measures” to ensure the shipments would be safe.

Later, when Justice Jones again asked Conoco attorney Erik Stidham why the coke drums were shipped to Lewiston before permits had been granted by Idaho for travel on Highway 12, his answer was that Emmert had been hired by Conoco in 2006 and had been working closely with the state since 2007 to develop a transport plan that would meet the ITD’s requirements, including public safety and convenience. He said the route now had 102 pullouts and other stops for extra-wide loads. The 700-page travel plan was revised four times to satisfy ITD and four surveys of the road were conducted, he said.

“No one is pretending that there wasn’t a great deal of communication in advance,” Stidham declared.

* * *

The legal brief Conoco submitted to the Supreme Court explained that each transport would include five pilot car escorts, two state police escorts and two sign boards. Before the hearing, Laughy contended that, by his estimates, the much more numerous shipments Imperial Oil intended to make would require at least 8,000 hours of trooper time to complete. Noting that police often have good rapport with rural folk, he wondered what impact the force’s support of the mega-shipments might have on its public relations.

The questions of the Supreme Court justices were principally about points of law. For example, they pondered whether the plaintiffs had exhausted all other administrative remedies before bringing a suit, whether the district court had failed to give deference to ITD in interpreting its own regulations, whether the state had given primary concern to the safety and convenience of the general public and whether ITD had made reasonable efforts to determine that use of the highway for the shipments was a necessity.

Laird Lucas, the lead attorney for Advocates for the West, who represented the plaintiffs, argued that the case was brought to court because, “we needed immediate relief to stop an imminent activity that would cause irreparable harm.” He held up one sheet of paper, an undated and unsigned memo from Emmert International, which he said was the only evidence submitted by the state that it was necessary to use Highway 12 for the shipments.

Before the hearing, Lucas confided that even if the plaintiffs won the case, he would not be surprised if the state simply revised its own regulations to allow longer delays of traffic during oversized shipments. (A key dispute in the lawsuit centers on the length of time large shipments are allowed to delay traffic under the department’s regulations. IDT proceeded as if a 15-minute delay were allowable when there’s evidence its regulations limit the delay to 10 minutes.)

He said the judges’ decision could come quickly or could take months.

Later on the same day as the court case, the Columbian newspaper in Washington reported that on Oct. 6, the Port of Vancouver would receive its first of 15 shiploads of Imperial Oil’s approximately 200 mega-pieces of oil sands refinery equipment that would travel to Canada via the Port of Lewiston. No permits have yet been issued by ITD for movement of this equipment on state roads.

In the Supreme Court chambers, where reporters clustered around the avuncular Laughy after the hearing, either nobody yet knew that Imperial Oil had already begun its shipments from Korea to Idaho, or nobody was saying. Next to Laughy, a group of women spoke with Hendrickson. The two, who were planning to drive home immediately, were the most sought-after people in the room.

Earlier, Hendrickson had said that she and her husband compared themselves to Louisianans after the oil spill. “We feel like big oil’s next victim.”

“We know the oil companies have huge power,” Laughy added. “We also remember a story from Sunday school, about this guy named David. We have no choice in our lives. It’s important work. We recognize it won’t be settled by whatever decision the Supreme Court makes. We’re in it for the long haul.”

Read Part One of this series here.

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