By Chom Graecen

The Alberta Tar Sands are directly connected to the I-5 Skagit River bridge disaster.

Calgary-based Mullen Trucking was hauling housing (a huge box) for oil drilling equipment to Vancouver, Washington. This is one of the ports where drilling rigs are offloaded for a “Heavy Haul” on enormous trucks up to Alberta. Then the empty housing units are trucked down south for another run — that’s when the oversize load hit the Mt. Vernon-Burlington bridge on May 23.

This is what opponents of the Heavy Haul have been warning about — this equipment is too gargantuan for our aging transportation infrastructure. It might be prudent to review and update plans and regulations on transportation of Heavy Haul, considering the increasing activities of the tar sands industries and its related businesses and by-products as well as all the planned and existing transportation of coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

This bridge accident is a grave reminder of one of many unintended, unforeseen consequences of the tar sands industry, of which we are part as consumers. Part of oil refined and consumed in Washington comes from Alberta tar sands via an oil pipeline from Alberta to Cherry Point and Anacortes.

Here are background links:

“The tractor-trailer was hauling drilling equipment housing to Vancouver, Wash.”
https://www.gazettetimes.com/news/headlines/truck-in-bridge-collapse-hauled-drilling-equipment/article_c6b8e03e-c41d-11e2-afe2-001a4bcf887a.html

Mullen Trucking has “escorted numerous loads destined for the tar sands”:
https://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/megaloads/Content?oid=1702518

Mullen Trucking at Oil Sands Trade Show
https://oilsandstradeshow.com/2013/exhibitors/mullen-trucking-lp/

“There are some big players in the logistics industry in Alberta’s oil sands. For example, Mullen Trucking L.P. has a $2.5 billion market cap. Terrible road conditions mean trucking equipment around is hugely important…rig-moving equipment is ‘the latest thing.'”
https://www.oregonlive.com/hillsboro/index.ssf/2012/07/hillsboros_columbia_industries_1.html

“Opponents force Imperial Oil to send megaloads to Canada’s oil sands on interstates, avoiding scenic highways” (with map)
https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2011/11/opponents_force_imperial_oil_t.html

All Against the Haul
https://allagainstthehaul.org

(Zoltan Grossman provided much of the above text.)

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