Idaho's Clearwater and Lochsa rivers have made it on a list of top 10 most endangered rivers in America. The list is put out every year by American Rivers, an advocacy group that works to protect and restore rivers in the U.S.
The list includes 10 rivers across the country that face a critical decision point in the next year. The 2014 list also includes the Middle Mississippi, the Upper Colorado, and the San Joaquin River in California.
But instead of dams or pollution, American Rivers says the danger to Idaho’s two rivers are continued shipments of massive oilfield equipment, or megaloads, that travel through the Highway 12 scenic corridor.
Scott Bosse is the Northern Rockies director for American Rivers. He’s based in Bozeman, Mont. but spent several years in Idaho, working and playing along the Clearwater and Lochsa.
Bosse says what’s threatened is the special way that people interact with these two rivers. “I call it their cultural integrity,” says Bosse. “People come from across the state, across the country and around the world to fish, to paddle, and camp along these rivers and allowing megaload traffic over the next decade or two through this river corridor would fundamentally transform the character of that river corridor.”
The Highway 12 corridor has been at the center of lawsuits and courtroom battles over the future of megaloads on their way to the tar sands oil deposits of Alberta, Canada.
Bosse doesn’t like megaloads because they could fall into the river. He says it would be extremely complicated to try and recover such a massive piece of equipment. But there are other concerns, too. “More importantly, the danger that megaloads pose to the river is the way that they would transform the solitude and the scenery and the way people experience that river corridor,” says Bosse. “No one wants to see megaloads parked at every pullout, to get stuck behind a megaload moving ten miles per hour on that highway, it really changes the way that you experience those rivers.”
Bosse calls megaloads “giant metal dinosaurs.” He says his group isn’t saying the Alberta tar sands or the Port of Lewiston should be shut down. But they believe Highway 12 is the worst route that the megaloads could possibly take.
Bosse says people would never think of allowing megaloads to use the highways in Yellowstone National Park, so why allow them along two of America’s wild and scenic rivers.
Last fall, a judge ordered an injunction that blocks further megaloads on Highway 12 until the U.S. Forest Service completes a corridor study and consults with the Nez Perce Tribe. A study from the Forest Service came out Monday looking at the impacts of megaloads along the route. And today, Idaho Rivers United and the Nez Perce Tribe say they are in mediation with the Forest Service to end the lawsuit.
American Rivers wants the U.S. Forest Service to ban all future megaloads along the Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers.
Copyright 2014 Boise State Public Radio
