Road maintenance funding debate continues

An article in the November 26 Bellingham Herald highlights the Forest Service's ongoing road maintenance funding and policy challenges. The article quotes several members of Washington State's Congressional delegation as they respond to a letter from Mark Rey, Undersecretary of Agriculture, about management of the national forest road system. (The beginning of the Bellingham article talks about national parks roads, but Rey's letter is about national forest roads.)

The bottom line here is that the Forest Service does not have enough money to maintain their road system in Washington or nationally, and the road system is going into greater and greater "maintenance debt" every year. As explained on our Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative campaign site, and in the Bellingham Herald article, WA Congressman Norm Dicks has proposed (and the House passed) an increase in road maintenance and decommissioning funding of $65 million to the Forest Service. But the funding has yet be introduced in the Senate, so it still has a long way to go before being allocated. Even more significantly, this funding is just a drop in the bucket compared to the total needed nationally, yet it is only proposed as one time funding. The Forest Service needs to completely overhaul their road funding system to not only maintain needed roads, but to remove unneeded roads and restore that land back to natural conditions, thus reducing road maintenance costs over the long term, while protecting and restoring clean water and wildlife habitat.