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.

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Red Leaf Resources scraping open a new strip mine

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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.

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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.

Utah Tar Sands Intergenerational Campout – June 20-22

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Join us June 20-22 for an intergenerational campout, bringing together families to project future generations from the Utah tar sands.

This is a unique opportunity to camp out in the scenic Book Cliffs of Eastern Utah with your family and friends and a group of people dedicated to climate justice.

Fun and informative activities will be planned throughout the weekend for adults and children of various ages.

Last year a group of families converged at PR Springs, site of the first proposed tar sands mine in the United States. While there, everyone from a 2-year-old, pre-teens, and Grandparents spent time exploring the land with local organizers, hiking, bird watching, water-testing, and, most importantly, learning about US Oil Sands’ project, and witnessing the devastation already being wrought by their 9-acre test site.

The School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), the State of Utah, and US Oil Sands would have us believe that the tar sands & oil shale projects moving forward in Eastern Utah are all for the benefit of the children. For, they would say, isn’t all the money from the Trust Lands being leased for extreme fossil fuel development going towards education? No. SITLA’s annual contribution to education accounts for only about 1 percent of the state’s $3 billion-plus education budget. With every parcel of stolen land leased for development and extraction, and every acre sacrificed, the more the land is devastated, the water put at risk and polluted, and the air filled with dust and toxins, the future of our children, and of future generations, becomes more and more bleak.

The short term gains from destroying the Book Cliffs, and turning Colorado Plateau into a sacrifice zone, is not worth the future of our children. Come see what’s at risk. Come take a stand.

***** SO THAT WE CAN BETTER ORGANIZE FOOD, CARPOOLING & CAMPING SITES, EMAIL US AT tarsandsresist@riseup.net IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON COMING. *****

FOR DIRECTIONS TO THE AREA & TIPS FOR CAMPING, VISIT OUR CONNECT WITH THE LAND PAGE.

Nov. 8 & 9: Tar Sands Discussions in Grand Junction

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Join the Utah Tar Sands Resistance in Grand Junction and Silt, Colorado, November 8th and 9th for a community discussion tar sands and oil shale extraction in the Colorado Plateau.

Friday, November 8th in Grand Junction, CO:
12PM- Wraps on Main (150 W Main Street)
7PM – Center for Independence (740 Gunnison Avenue)

Saturday, November 9th in Silt, CO:
4:30PM – Silt Library (680 Home Ave)

In Utah, tar sands mining could soon begin–for the first time in the U.S.–and the tar-like oil would be refined in North Salt Lake. This, however, does not make this Utah’s battle alone. US Oil Sands, a Canadian Company, currently has a test pit just minutes from the Colorado border, and the devastation projects such as this will wreak on the lands, air, water, wildlife, and communities of the Colorado Plateau effect us all.

While this first project lays on state land, the BLM has also designated 800,000 acres across Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for tar sands and oil shale extraction.

Mining, shipping & refining tar sands in the region would harm our air, and our health, even more than refining regular crude, making it a major climate justice issue. Join us to work on creating SOLUTIONS to this human health nightmare, while forging a resilient community that’s empowered to take action!

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Utah children visit PR Springs & speak out against tar sands

On June 22nd, 2013, as part of the 4th Annual Global Earth Exchange, and #FearlessSummer, a group of Utah children traveled to PR Springs, the site of the first proposed Tar Sands mining project in the United States.

They created a work of art in appreciation for Mother Earth, made entirely of objects found around the mine, and spoke in opposition to the Tar Sands.

UTSR Global Earth Exchange

(Photo by Steve Liptay)

UTSR Danger Mine Site

(photo by Steve Liptay)

EnviroNews (VIDEO): Families Camp Out in Protest to Save the Pristine Tavaputs Plateau From America’s First Approved Tar Sands Operation

(Reposted with permission from EnviroNews)

(EnviroNews Utah) – Tar sands, oil sands, asphalt, and bituminous sands. These names all represent the same type of fossil fuel, a fossil fuel so difficult and energy intensive to mine and process that past attempts to harness it’s dirty energy in the United States have resulted in bankrupt companies and abandoned test sites that have scarred the land with barren eyesores without a plan for recovery or restoration.

The massive Athabasca strip mine in Alberta, Canada has put tar sands on the map in the last few years via the mounting pressure surrounding President Obama’s upcoming decision on the 4th and final leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline that, if approved, will serve to open the flood gates for poisonous and carbon-loaded bitumen crude on an unprecedented scale. It is also known that much, if not all of the product moved through KXL is set to be sold abroad to countries such as China, leaving the U.S. holding the bag in what is now being called the “All Risk, No Reward campaign”.

Despite all of the recent heat surrounding the simply massive Alberta oil sands conundrum, plans to strip the land of all life in pursuit of even more of these deadly bituminous sands quietly continue, largely under the radar of the mainstream media. But this isn’t the everyday yukky stuff from Canada that you’re used to, rather, these burnable rocks are set to be plundered right from your backyard. At least if you live in the Western United States.

In a stunning move the BLM has opened approximately 850,000 acres for exploration and development of the technique, a technique that is so riddled with carbon emissions that world-leading climate scientist James Hansen, formerly of NASA, has been sounding the alarm, warning that it will be “game over for the climate” if these dirty extraction plans are realized.

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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