Oregon Megaloads Draw Protesters

Protesters Rod Lyman and Kathy Leathers, both of Bellingham, Wash., hold up signs on Highway 395 as the megaload slowly passes by in Hermiston, Ore., Monday night. The transport rig, carrying a 450-ton piece of oil refinery equipment, is bound for a tar sands oil development in western Canada. (AP Photo/Daily Astorian, E.J. Harris)

A transport rig carrying a 450-ton piece of equipment bound for the Canadian oil sands left a northeast Oregon port on Monday night, the AP reports, a day after protesters halted its earlier planned departure on Sunday, resulting in two arrests. The water purification equipment is destined for Alberta; from eastern Oregon it will travel through Idaho and Montana, traveling only at night because it’s so large it’ll take up both lanes of the two-lane sections of roads it travels. The megaload, being transported for a division of General Electric, is 22 feet wide and 380 feet long; the company had earlier planned to send the loads over north-central Idaho’s scenic U.S. Highway 12, but was halted by a lawsuit and protests from the Nez Perce Tribe/ Betsy Russell , Eye on Boise. More here.

Question: Are you sympathetic to the protests against megaloads rolling through the Inland Northwest to eastern Montana?