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.)
Technically I guess the accident was an unintended consequence, but to use it as a foil to make your argument against tar sands, you miss the major point of the accident. The accident was the result of many factors of which the tar sands project had less of an impact on it than what the driver of the truck had for breakfast.
The bridge collapse was a combination of an antiquated bridge design that wasn’t intended to handle today’s large trucks; a bridge design that was susceptible to total collapse from single impact; and if recent reports are correct, the fact that the escort car hit the bridge with its over height measuring pole and didn’t stop. It could have been any over height truck that caused the accident, and it was only a matter of time before one did.
The major issue isn’t whether the tar sands project should or should not continue, the major issue is that our infrastructure is aging, insufficient, and in many cases, in such a state of disrepair that the population at large is in serious risk of injury or death. Please don’t miss the big picture of the bridge collapse in an effort to use it as an argument against a largely unrelated event.