'Permanent Protest Vigil' Launched to Confront First Tar Sands Mine in US

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/29-3



Groups resist project that "would cause swift obliteration of multiple ecosystems and severe contributions to climate-change related disasters," says activist.

'Permanent Protest Vigil' Launched to Confront First Tar Sands Mine in US
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Published on Thursday, May 29, 2014 by Common Dreams

As a Canadian company readies its plans for extraction at the first proposed tar sands mine in the United States, a group of climate justice activists is readying its own mobilization: a permanent protest vigil at the site to protest the project's "swift obliteration" of ecosystems, danger to waterways and contribution to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

The company, Calgary, Alberta-based US Oil Sands, has leased over 32,000 acres of public land in the Book Cliffs area of Utah, and foresees its $60 million PR Springs project producing tar sands in 2015. The site of the mine also sits just outside the Northern Ute Ouray Reservation.

The project has faced ongoing resistance from environmental groups who have seen the devastating impacts the Alberta tar sands have brought to land, water and indigenous communities.

"These beautiful lands that US Oil Sands plans to destroy have been enjoyed by Utahns for decades and were the home for Ute people for hundreds of generations," Jessica Lee, a spokesperson for Utah Tar Sands Resistance and Peaceful Uprising, said in a statement. "This tar sands strip mine would cause swift obliteration of multiple ecosystems and severe contributions to climate-change related disasters."

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Check out US Oil Sands propaganda at: http://www.usoilsandsinc.com/