2008 Legacy Roads Funding — Complete List of Approved Projects
Approved Projects (listed regionally)
In 2008 Congress provided first-time funding to the Forest Service for the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative
(Legacy Roads). With $39.4 million in new money, the Forest Service was given its first opportunity to being addressing some of the problems created by the legacy of
logging roads in our national forests. According to the legislation,
the money can be used for critical maintenance and restoration work,
particularly where forest roads create risks to water quality and
threatened or endangered wildlife species. Aging, undermaintained
forest roads endanger public lands, clean water and fish populations.
Thousands of miles of roads block fish passage and are at risk of
triggering destructive landslides. And while $40 million may seem like
a lot of money, the Forest Service estimates the maintenance backlog on
our national forest roads to be as high as $10 billion. It’s our hope
that the Legacy Roads will become a permanent program, with annual funding to
restore watersheds by decommissioning unneeded roads, while fixing
culverts and performing regularly needed maintenance on those roads
that we do need.
A final report on FY08 Legacy Roads projects was distributed to Congress in April, 2009 - see related link to download individual regional reports. These reports describes exactly what was spent in each region on each forest on Legacy Road projects. In many cases, funds were borrowed for fire and not paid back in time to award contracts in 2008. Some of these projects may be continued in 2009, others may not. In addition, some initially approved projects seem to have been eliminated. When 2009 project announcements are released, we will post them on a related link.
Attached to this webpage are a set of spreadsheets we received in July 2008 from the Forest Service that describe how they planned to use the initial Legacy Roads funding. According to the totals calculated from these spreadsheets, the Forest Service intended to:
- Construct or reconstruct 407 stream crossings to restore fish passage,
- Restore or enhance 581 miles of stream habitat,
- Improve 236 miles of passenger car roads and 908 miles of high clearance vehicle roads
- Maintain 529 miles of passenger car roads and 999 miles of high clearance vehicle roads,
- Decommission 303 miles of roads,
- Construct or reconstruct 66 bridges,
- Maintain 1165 miles of trails to standard,
- Improve 618 miles of trails to meet standards, and
- Improve a minimum of 60,831 acres of watershed (several regions did not report the acres of improved watersheds).
- 1,533 miles of system roads maintained
- 180 miles of authorized roads decommissioned
- 351 miles of unauthorized roads decommissioned
- 6 bridges or major culverts decommissioned
- 631 miles of system roads improved
- 11 bridges or major culverts repaired or replaced
- 22 miles of system trails improved
Regardless of whether they met their initial projections or not, this is an impressive first step towards the comprehensive stewardship of our national forest watersheds. While ideally there would have been more miles of roads decommissioned, this is still a great start toward dramatically reducing the impacts roads have on water, fisheries and wildlife. Wildlands CPR leads both the regional coalition (Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative) and the national adhoc network that advocate for Legacy Roads.
To find out what was actually funded on your favorite forest, and the overall results from 2008 Legacy Roads click here.
To compare that to what was initially awarded, download the Forest
Service proposed projects spreadsheet.
Please note that all Forest Service regions are included on this one
spreadsheet and you can click on the tabs at the bottom of the
spreadsheet to pull up the individual data for each region. If you have
questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Below you’ll find a key
to determine where your local forest is found and what some of the key
abbreviations mean in the spreadsheet.
USFS Regions:
Region 1: Montana, Northern Idaho, North Dakota
Region 2: Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas
Region 3: Arizona, New Mexico
Region 4: Southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada
Region 5: California
Region 6: Oregon, Washington
Region 8: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana,
Okalahoma, Texas
Region 9: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West
Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Region 10: Alaska
Abbreviations Key:
AOP – Aquatic Organism Passage (fish passage)
CMP – Corrugated Metal Pipe (culvert)
HC – High Clearance Vehicle
NEPA – National Environmental Policy Act
PC – Passenger Car
TMDL – Total Maximum Daily Load (of sedimentation in a stream)
There are several Forest Service abbreviations that are specific to
funding or agency data and we have not listed those here (e.g. CMLG,
RFFF).
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Legacy Projects FY08 | 360 KB |