MEGALOAD: Blame Boise for mess

The three Great Falls, Mont., bound 427-foot long megaload parked near Clarkston, Wash., at the Idaho border for three months seems rather goofy. This 800-ton load didn’t seek a permit until it reaches a state line? Isn’t “bridge law” (weight limits) already what it is?

So now it becomes a peeing contest between N.I.M.B.Y. (not in my backyard) groups in Bonner County along Lake Pend Oreille and their more affluent counterparts in Kootenai County along Lake Coeur d’Alene? There is no railway or highway through our panhandle that doesn’t include a river-valley. It’s only a matter of which one.

The Coeur d’Alene group that thinks U.S. 95 north to Idaho State Highway 200 is better than Interstate 90 eastward crowd had better think again. That idea would take the load over the long bridge to Sandpoint and their new bypass and then through Kootenai, Hope, Clark Fork and Cabinet Gorge Dam area. There are rock cliffs that had frozen ice outcroppings a few months ago that nearly hang over the roadway. This is a bad idea replaced by a worse yet idea.

This whole mess could have been avoided by eliminating unrealistic expectations mostly caused by “Idaho is megaload easy” reputation to begin with like our high weight limit triple big-rig trailer laws popular in many sparsely populated western states, but not allowed in states where people actually live in significant numbers.

I can’t believe that some Idaho Transportation official didn’t “yeah, yeah” permission for this six-big-rig-long load to cross Idaho only for Mammoet USA to realize too late that the state of Idaho wasn’t the only authority in this debacle and just one more example how the Boise operates in another space and time dimension than the panhandle and its neighboring states.

I think Coeur d’Alene is going to have to hold their nose on this one and remember to put the blame where it belongs: on the Bozos in Boise. But we got guns on campus now while we ignore exploding unwed mother populations with their resulting prison population boom to prove our misplaced priorities. It’s all good!

MIKE RENO

Post Falls