From the desk of Pat Ford, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon:
I am happy to report a victory, incomplete but real, for people and rivers, salmon and wildness. Exxon's plan to use the lower Snake River and Idaho and Montana scenic local roads to transport gargantuan mining/milling equipment to the Alberta tar sands seems close to death. A year ago, Bobby Hayden of SOS named the scheme "Highway to Hell", a good literal description. Like Frankenstein in the northern ice at the end of Mary Shelley's tale, it is now frozen.
There will be sequels, and we know ice melts. We cannot prematurely count out the world's largest corporation, Exxon has shifted its plans geographically rather than giving up (its new proposed highway route threatens parts of Spokane), and the beast this one tentacle was to serve, tar sands production itself, goes on. But last week Exxon announced its equipment will still be barged on the Columbia River to the Tri-Cities, but for now will not come on to Lewiston to then threaten Highway 12, the communities along it, and the salmon of the Snake, Clearwater, and Salmon Rivers.
There will be sequels, and we know ice melts. We cannot prematurely count out the world's largest corporation, Exxon has shifted its plans geographically rather than giving up (its new proposed highway route threatens parts of Spokane), and the beast this one tentacle was to serve, tar sands production itself, goes on. But last week Exxon announced its equipment will still be barged on the Columbia River to the Tri-Cities, but for now will not come on to Lewiston to then threaten Highway 12, the communities along it, and the salmon of the Snake, Clearwater, and Salmon Rivers.
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