Stimulus funds road decommissioning

Wildlands CPR and colleagues around the country have been working feverishly to ensure that some funding for rural green jobs, through watershed restoration would be included in the stimulus bill.

We’re delighted to report that some of this funding survived the compromise discussions in the senate and the conferencing between the senate and the house.  The final bill includes language that provides the Forest Service $650M for “priority road, bridge and trail maintenance and decommissioning, including related watershed restoration and ecosystem enhancement projects; facilities improvement, maintenance and renovation…”

Congress was fairly consistent about keeping the language simple, and not including earmarks in this bill.   

There’s no guarantee that a penny of this money will go to decommissioning, so we have a lot of work to do to press the agency to spend this money well, and to make sure they aren’t spending it to fix roads that they really don’t need any more.  That said, initial news we have from several regions of the Forest Service is that they’ve been creating projects consistent with the Legacy Roads Initiative from last year and, because of that, they expect that a significant portion of their proposals to the Washington Office (all the regions have to send project requests for stimulus funding to the Washington Office by next week) will be consistent with the Legacy Roads Initiative.

Keep an eye on our website for more information about stimulus and next steps.