New Film, “The East Tavaputs Plateau: A Land Fighting for Survival”

 

This newly-released short film lets you see for yourself the incredible beauty of the East Tavaputs Plateau, slated for tar sands strip mining. Get up close to the natural wonders hiding throughout this enchanting land, and ask yourself what you would do to defend it.

On the East Tavaputs Plateau of so-called Utah, which is Uintah Ute territory, US Oil Sands is trying to start up the first massive strip mine to produce fuel from tar sands in the U.S. Meanwhile, grassroots groups like Utah Tar Sands Resistance, Peaceful Uprising, and Canyon Country Rising Tide are battling to defend this lush and diverse land. 

Witness the amazing beings and ecosystems fighting for life alongside incredible destruction. While they don’t get the attention of Canyonlands or the San Raphael, these places are near and dear to us and many other folks in Utah. From the sandstone cliffs of Main Canyon with their hidden bat caves, to the sweeping vistas of the Book Cliffs, this land deserves protection as much as any national park. And as part of the headwaters of the Colorado River as well as a massive source of carbon, our future is intertwined with its own.

Site Report: USOS seems far behind on schedule!

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From the looks of it, no one’s going to be processing bitumen on the Tavaputs Plateau this year.

US Oil Sands has promised investors they’d achieve commercial production by the final quarter of 2015.

Let’s take a look at what’s happening out there.

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Though there’s personnel on the production site, it seems impossible to run graders and other machinery in all this muck.

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The entrance to Children’s Legacy Camp (the area they’ve been clearcutting and grading) is a slushpile.

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The processing site has a nice layer of snow on the ground. There’s been no paving work so far, meaning it’s awfully hard to run machines over this slushy ground too. Paving site roads (a goal outlined in the mine plan) sure seemed like one of the crucial stepping stones to building capacity to work all winter and achieve commercial production.

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New conveyors are in, but kind of just sitting there in the snowy field.
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The Legacy area has been quiet. At 8,000 feet, it seems awfully hard to dig up this frozen tundra in the winter.
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Seems like a whole lot of investor dollars being spent on worker salaries, with the potential for very minimal results.

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If seeing all this destruction moves you, now is the time to jump in! Together we can win this fight.