Author Says Oil Company Trucking Threatens Montana Wilderness

Annick Smith, author of Homestead, Big Bluestem, and In This We Are Native and co-producer of “A River Runs Through It,” has special insight into the impact of mining on wilderness. She and other Montanans are questioning the intelligence of allowing oil drillers to truck massive equipment through through the Big Blackfoot Valley in its way to oil sands deposits in Alberta, Canada.
“In Montana, Smith and others started a local group called All Against the Haul, which is mounting opposition to what is officially known by the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) as the Kearl Module Transport Project.” Jeff Galius in Fast Forward Weekly.
Tom Zeller Jr. also covered the story of the controversial transport route in The New York Times last month, noting that “some of the shipments would weigh more than 600,000 pounds, stand as tall as a three-story building, stretch nearly two-thirds the length of a football field and occupy 24 feet side-to-side” and telling the story behind the story: that environmentalists consider oil sands extraction to be one of the dirtiest forms of fuel production.