• Story
  • Comments

‘);$(“#content-tool-box-”+tool_name).jqm({trigger:this,overlay:20});}});});

Project scope

Nickel Bros. is the hauler for the Weyerhaeuser project; it involves 12 loads, two of which are just one lane wide, about 14 feet, and already have traveled across Highway 12. Friends of the Clearwater didn’t protest those two. The remaining loads vary in width and height from 14.2 feet to 23.1 feet; six are more than 18 feet high and wide.

ADVERTISEMENTAdvertise Here

BOISE – Idaho’s transportation director refused Friday to allow hearings that could delay a new proposal to send megaloads of equipment across scenic U.S. Highway 12 in north-central Idaho.

Several of the loads are wide enough to block both lanes of traffic on the narrow, twisting, two-lane route.

The move followed extended hearings that delayed for months the plans by Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil to send more than 200 giant loads of oil equipment over the route; ExxonMobil instead reduced the height of many of the loads so they can travel on a freeway route instead.

Brian Ness, Idaho Transportation Department director, rejected a petition from Friends of the Clearwater, a conservation group based in Moscow, Idaho, to hold a contested-case hearing on a new proposal from Nickel Bros. and Weyerhaeuser Inc. to run nine large oversize loads over Highway 12 on their way to a Weyerhaeuser pulp mill in northern Alberta.

Ness ruled that all the issues the Friends of the Clearwater raised in their petition already were addressed in the contested-case hearings over proposals from ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.

“A third contested case hearing is not warranted. The facts and concerns raised in the petition have been fully considered in two separate hearings and resolved by hearing officers,” Ness said.

However, during the earlier hearings, when opponents raised concerns about the ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil loads setting a precedent for turning the popular scenic river corridor into a megaload-friendly industrial route, ITD stressed that it was considering only the proposal before it – and not

Article source: http://feeds.stateline.org/~r/StatelineorgRss-Transportation/~3/hJxJBZKyvm8/