By Jennifer Dobner in The Salt Lake Tribune – Four activists reportedly were arrested in Utah’s Book Cliffs on Monday during a protest against the planned expansion of a tar sands mine, which the group argues could do significant damage to regional water resources in the Colorado River watershed area. Peaceful Uprising announced the arrests on its website and through Twitter on Monday and said police officers from two state agencies and sheriff’s offices in Grand and Uintah counties were involved in the arrests. It wasn’t immediately clear if the individuals were taken into custody or cited and released by police. On Monday, protesters suspended themselves from metal tripods to block site-clearing work underway at PR Spring, where the East Tavaputs Plateau straddles the Grand and Uintah county lines. Officers reportedly used a cherry picker to remove them.
Uintah County prosecutors have filed felony and misdemeanor charges against 21 people from 10 states who were arrested during a summer protest at the site of a controversial tar sands mine. he charges stem from a July 21 protest at the U.S. Oil Sands mine site, which sits on land leased to the Canadian energy firm by the state School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration. During the protest, 12 environmental activists climbed an 8-foot-tall, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and entered the mine site, according to court records. Five of the activists chained themselves to heavy equipment inside the fenced area, deputies said. About 30 protesters outside the fenced area were told to leave the mine site or face arrest, according to court records. Only one of the 30 failed to follow that order and was arrested. In July, Utah Tar Sands Resistance spokeswoman Jessica Lee said deputies treated the protesters so roughly during the arrests that it amounted to police brutality. “This is a clear example of the Uintah County sheriff escalating things,” Lee said at the time, noting that protesters were “grabbed in an aggressive manner” and some were “thrown to the ground.”
Protesters again stopped work at the construction site of the first tar sands mine in the US. Five people were later arrested and jailed but the campaign to stop the mine said the resistance will not relent until all tar sands plans are canceled. By moving quickly through the site to obstruct numerous construction vehicles, just a handful of speedy protesters were able to shut down the enormous construction project on a sprawling 213 acres in Utah’s Book Cliffs. “Direct, physical intervention is necessary to halt the completion of this toxic project,” said one protester.
The guises were defenses not against the weather, but against the cops and a security camera trained on a test pit for what could soon become the first commercial tar sands mine in the U.S. Tar sands contain an unconventional crude called bitumen, that with a great deal of water and energy can be extracted from sand and rock, and refined into fuel. The industry is big business in Alberta, Canada, and one of the most carbon-intense fossil fuels. U.S. environmentalists have fiercely opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport Canadian tar sands crude to U.S. refineries, in a bid to influence further development to the north. Less known, and less opposed nationally, is the push to develop Utah’s own tar sands deposits.
Land defenders in Utah locked themselves to equipment being used to clear-cut and grade an area designated for the tar sands’ companies processing plant, as well as a fenced “cage” used to store the equipment. Others formed a physical blockade with their bodies to keep work from happening, and to protect those locked-down to the equipment. Banners were also hung off the cage that read: “You are trespassing on Ute land” and “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance.” 13 people were arrested for locking to equipment. An additional six people were arrested after sitting in the road to prevent the removal of those being taken away in two police vans. Two of the protesters arrested were injured. One was taken a nearby hospital to be treated, while the other is being treated at the Uintah County Jail. The nature of their injuries is not being disclosed by the county sheriffs. A media representative from Unedited Media was also arrested. Two additional people were arrested when they arrived at Uintah Country Jail to provide support to the land defenders inside. An estimated 10 armed deputies with police dogs were standing outside the jail wearing bullet proof vests.
Plenty of nightmare surveillance theories surround the million-square-foot NSA facility opened last year in Bluffdale, Utah. Any locals driving by the gargantuan complex Friday morning saw something that may inspire new ones: A massive blimp hovering over the center, with the letters NSA printed on its side. Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the 135-foot thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency’s mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform. The full message on the blimp reads “NSA: Illegal Spying Below” along with an arrow pointing downward and the Stand Against Spying URL. “We thought it would be fun to fly an airship around the Utah data center, which in many ways epitomizes the NSA’s collect-it-all strategy,” says Rainey Reitman, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We wanted to have a way to symbolize that our movement is getting quite confrontational with NSA surveillance in a visceral way.”
Without considering the merits of the case, the Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out an environmental challenge to a tar sands mine set to be dug on state trust lands on the Tavaputs Plateau. Living Rivers, a Moab-based group, was too late when it appealed the state groundwater permit issued to U.S. Oil Sands, according to the unanimous decision penned by Justice Thomas Lee. Because the petition was not filed within 30 days, the 2008 decision by the Utah Division of Water Quality “became final and immune from collateral attack.” But lawyers for Living Rivers said DWQ gave no notice of that decision. “We didn’t find out about it until we challenged the permit before the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining,” said Rob Dubuc of Western Resource Advocates. “It was impossible for any party to comment within that 30-day window.” The appeal was the project’s last legal obstacle and Calgary-based U.S. Oil Sands plans to begin preparing the 213-acre mine site and bitumen-processing facility this summer. Production of 2,000 barrels of oil a day is expected by fall 2015, according to company president Glen Snarr.
Even before Tom Weis made his call for people to show up at the site of U.S. Oil Sands tar sands development, Utah’s own Utah Tar Sands Resistance (UTSR) has been holding campouts at PR Springs to bring attention to the problem, accountability to the process and opportunities for people to learn about the beauty and wonder of nature that exists in the Eastern Utah environment. UTSR has ramped up its presence in PR Springs with a “permanent protest vigil.”The summer of protest will be punctuated by campouts for anyone who feels like he or she has a stake in the tar sands development and what it means for climate justice and health in the Uintah Basin. “This issue really does impact us all,” says Jessica Lee, one of the organizers at UTSR. The weekend of June 20, 2014 will feature an intergenerational campout specifically geared toward children and families. Lee describe last year’s intergenerational campout as a success and says she was surprised at what the children were able to learn over the course of a couple of days. The weekend of June 27 will concentrate on showing solidarity for the 5th annual and final Healing Walk, a protest against the Athabascan Tar Sands operation and the damage that it is doing to the environment and the people in the area. According to Lee, there will be discussions drawing connections will “for this global fossil fuel infrastructure.”
Last weekend, tar sands resistLast weekend, tar sands resisters new and old gathered in the Book Cliffs of so-called Eastern Utah, at PR Springs, site of the first proposed tar sands mine in the United States. This gathering marked nearly three years of observation, law suits, and direct action against the project, and signaled the beginning of a permanent protest vigil inside the boundaries of public lands leased for strip mining. U.S. Oil Sands, of Calgary, Alberta, has leased over 32,000 acres of land traditionally inhabited by Ute and Shoshone people. The land is now managed by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), and sits just outside the Northern Ute Ouray Reservation. The company has yet to begin full-scale production, and has spent the last year procuring their permits from the Department of Water Quality, wrangling $80 million from fly-by-night investors, and hiring Kellogg Brown & Root LLC (KBR) for project and construction management.
Undisturbed for thousands of years, the serene, picturesque Anasazi Valley is sheltered by stunning lava cliffs broken into giant cubed stones silently splattered with petroglyphs dating back to 3000 B.C., precariously perched as if tumbling from some mythical Thunderbird’s nest. This secluded enclave neighboring Southern Utah’s breathtaking natural wonders Snow Canyon and Zion National Park was home to ancient Puebloans, and since 450 A.D., Southern Paiute Indians. They consider it part of their sacred ancestral land. Elders still have memories of their grandfathers telling stories of coming here for traditional ceremonies, blessings, and gatherings. The background story begins in 1985, when Sheila Dean Wilson purchased the 80.1 acre parcel with 25.23 feet of water rights; she soon discovered remains of pit houses, pottery shards, and human burials. In order to keep the site sacred, Wilson founded the non-profit organization Sunhawk Productions, Inc. for the purpose of preserving the spiritual and cultural heritage and creating a Native American Learning Center.
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