Video of Monday’s Tripod Blockade Shut-Down of Children’s Legacy Camp Clearcutting

Last week, we watched US Oil Sands clearcutting the Children’s Legacy Camp, completely devastating the area in just four short days.

Then on Monday, two tripods went up on the newly-bulldozed haul road that leads into the destruction zone, set up by stealthy and quick-moving allies. No sooner had they thrown up the tripods than two agile climbers had pulled themselves up into their apexes, all before the cops posted at the processing site down the road must have had any idea what was happening.

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Watch this awesome video of the action from Direct Autonomous Media!

As the day wore on, spirits stayed high, with folks singing, chanting, and calling moral support to the tripod sitters. By late morning, a cherry picker had finally arrived to extract the folks perched on the tripods. But after the cops arrested the  first tripod sitter, and the cherry picker was moving toward the second, another quick-thinking comrade locked to the cherry picker itself, causing a serious delay to the extractions!

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For more coverage of the action, visit PeacefulUprising.org/aca2015

We’re so very grateful for the brave folks who took action to defend Children’s Legacy Camp and the legacy we are leaving for the children of our world. The images of the bulldozed site speak for themselves: The only legacy USOS would leave our children is one of toxic destruction. We think they deserve something better. Join us at the vigil to see for yourself what is happening and get involved!

http://www.tarsandsresist.org/camp/

VIDEO: Watching U.S. Oil Sands

This summer, as protestors gather at PR Springs, site of the first tar sands mine in the United States, for a permanent protest vigil, they are poised not only to observe the comings & goings of U.S. Oil Sands, the Canadian tar sands company setting up shop, but also to do something about it.

GET INVOLVED:
Donate money & supplies to the Resistance! Help us keep going!
Join us for the Intergenerational Campout, June 20-22
Tar Sands Healing Walk Solidarity Campout, June 27-29

Read the 1st dispatch from the front:
Red Leaf Resources scraping open a new strip mine

STAY TUNED! We’re just getting started, y’all.

Storm Brewing: Permanent protest setup at proposed tar sands strip mine

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People hold a giant banner inside the tar sands mine. The banner reads: Climate Justice is Survival Now Or Never.

Last 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.

Check out our DONATIONS PAGE to make an online donation or check out our gear request list! 

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.

music: “Without Water,” KleeBenally.com

In March, Living Rivers brought U.S. Oil Sands (USOS) and the Department of Water Quality (DWQ) to the Utah Supreme Court, whose ruling we eagerly await, arguing that the permits given to USOS had failed to take into consideration the devastating impacts the strip-mining project would have on the precious groundwater in the region. DWQ stated that there was not enough groundwater to be of concern (though geologists from the University of Utah have found otherwise in their extensive study of the region’s groundwater systems) and is not requiring USOS to take any measures in their disposal of waste water used during their highly experimental and unproven new tar sands mining process. US Oil Sands is fond of stating that their project will use very little water, as it is completely dependent on a chemical called d-limonene (an expensive solvent, at $36/gallon), but their permit application itself states that they will still require 116 gallons of water per minute, which they have failed to procured in the five water wells they’ve drilled that tap into the Mesaverde Aquifer. In an interview published this week, the company stated that they’ve “hit on the idea of using a dryer” as part of the extraction process, though no data has been released about this, and it remains to be seen if the company has updated their permits to include this new technology.

SONY DSCIn the same interview, Cameron Todd, the CEO of U.S. Oil Sands, stated, “We’re fully permitted and we’ve actually started work in the field already although most of the work won’t be done until next summer.”

In a May 14th press release, the company stated that they would  be completing Phase 1 of their project, at a cost of nearly $60 million, though their current stock price has halved from their $0.24 high to a measly $0.12, and mentions commercial start-up date of 2015.

This proposed time-line remains consistent with the company’s history, as they have pushed back full production year after year, having had a difficult time finding investors for a very risky project, and having been fought, both in the courts and in the very mine itself, by groups and individuals who vow that they will see the project stopped.

Last weekend’s act of civil disobedience saw protestors walk onto a the company’s 10-acre test mine with a huge banner reading “Climate Justice is Survival: Now or Never.”

While the land itself, once stolen from the Ute tribe, is destroyed, as carcinogens such as arsenic, mercury and uranium are leeched into the watershed, as tar sands and oil shale strip-mining add to the criminally toxic air quality of the Uintah Basin, and as the tar sands are trucked nearly 200 miles each day to Salt Lake City to be refined in poor and predominantly Latino neighborhoods, the Utah tar sands themselves are but one small piece of the global extraction monster. The fossil fuels our society has made itself dependent on have caused a man-made climate change emergency, and it is up to us to take a stand a say, “no more.” Tar sands are the bottom of the barrel, one of the dirtiest forms of energy found, and one that required mass amounts of resources to extract while proving very little usable energy. The Utah tar sands must remain in the ground if we have any hope of a livable future, and a coalition of passionate and dedicated people have taken a stand, saying “no tar sands!”

This summer, land defenders stand in vigil and protest, observing the actions and movement of U.S. Oil Sands, as well as several other tar sands and oil shale companies with greedy claims on the region, determining what areas are to be clear-cut or tested, and what infrastructure is built, as they prepare to stop them.

READ THE PRESS RELEASE.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Tar Sands

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As part of the Fearless Summer week of solidarity actions against extreme energy, Utah Tar Sands Resistance and allies confronted road construction crews on Seep Ridge Road, and expressed determination to stop both the road itself and what it is literally paving the way for–tar sands, oil shale and fracking across the Colorado River Basin (at an estimated cost of $3 million per mile).

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Seep Ridge, formerly a small dirt road, is now becoming a site of immense devastation as areas of Uintah County are clear cut, leveled, and ultimately pave from just south of Ouray, Utah, to the Uintah/Grand county line atop the Book Cliffs, a distance of some 44.5 miles. Eventually, this road may connect to I-70, though development of the Grand County leg has not been approved and is already meeting with resistance.
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July 24-29: Canyon Country Action Camp

UPDATE 7/31/13:
Check out the full report on action camp and the amazing action that resulted by going to http://www.peacefuluprising.org/actioncampaction
Utah Tar Sands Direct Action CampJoin our friends Peaceful Uprising and Canyon Country Rising Tide for the Utah Tar Sands Direct Action Training Camp, July 24-29th.

In an effort to create a dynamic and diverse learning space, they are asking that everyone planning on attending the camp fill out this application. Application deadline is July 1st. They will get back to you as soon as possible (by July 10th at the latest).

Canyon Country Action Camp

Abandoned tar sands pit near US Oil Sands test pit in Eastern Utah

A delegation of investigators from Peaceful Uprising, Utah Tar Sands Resistance and Living Rivers visited the East Tavaputs plateau to document the life of the area and destruction that would be inevitable if US Oil Sands is allowed to develop the first tar sands pit in the US. Actually, the FIRST tar sands pit–featured in this video–was an economic failure and was abandoned in 1983. Destroyed mining equipment, a still-open pit and oozing oil are still present at this 30-year-old site of industrial fossil fuel extraction.

Peaceful Uprising/OccupySaltLake/Utah Tar Sands Resistence Flash Mob S.I.T.L.A Office

Peaceful Uprising along with Utah Tar Sands Resistance & Occupy SLC present guerrilla street theater at SITLA – Utah State Institutional Trust Lands Administration – in protest of SITLA’s promotion of tar sands development in Utah.

Citizens’ Public Hearing against Tar Sands at SITLA Offices, Salt Lake City

Peaceful Uprising along with Utah Tar Sands Resistance & Occupy SLC present guerrilla street theater at SITLA – Utah State Institutional Trust Lands Administration – in protest of SITLA’s promotion of tar sands development in Utah.

This is the first enactment of PeaceUp’s quarterly Community Audits for 2012 . The community audit model seeks to identify and take action toward both hot spots (sources of injustice to protest) and cool spots (sources of hope to support). In addition to the Tar Sands “hot spot” at SITLA, PeaceUp will also hold a “cool spot” action in solidarity with those fighting for human rights. Check out our blog post to read how we’ve connected the dots between tar sands and human rights (Hint: it has to do with the economy)