Legacy Roads Funding — Year Two

The Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative received its second year of funding in the US House of Representative’s Fiscal Year 2009 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill but additional hurdles remain that could delay passage until this session of Congress expires.

Last year the Legacy Roads bill poured more than $39 million into badly needed road restoration and removal work. This year's bill contains $70 million for the program, but partisan wrangling and election year dynamics threaten to stall passage of the bill.

Representative Norm Dicks (D-WA), chair of the Interior and Environment Appropriations subcommittee, gets the bulk of the credit for making sure that the Legacy Roads funding continued at an increased level in this year's bill. His leadership was cruicial in protecting our national forest watersheds by funding these long overdue repairs of forest roads and culverts.

WCPR testified on behalf of the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative in March to request continued funding for the program. We are grateful that the committee heard our request and recommended funding the program at $70 million for fiscal year 2009.

The situation in our forest is critical. Due to chronic lack of funding for maintenance old roads and trails in our forest have been neglected resulting in habitat degradation from road and culvert failures. Roads are the primary source ecosystem degradation in our forests. Roads alter the hydrology of a forest watershed by increasing the flow of surface water and depositing sediments and other pollutants in our streams. Road and culvert failures create physical barriers for fish migration and destroy habitat crucial for a healthy salmon population.

Further, in recent years the Pacific Northwest has been hard hit by powerful storms compounding the damage due to deferred maintenance. Climate experts predict that global warming will produce more and more frequent storms, flooding coastal and low-lying inland areas. Long-term road and culvert maintenance problems estimated at $10 billion nationally must be tackled to avert compound damage to watershed viability from these increasingly powerful storms.

The vast system of roads within the Forest Service, developed primarily for timber extraction, is no longer needed yet these roads go unmaintained and threaten the living systems within our forests. The Forest Sevice has estimated that only one-thirds of the existing roads are necessary to access developed sites. Decommissioning of unneeded roads is a critical part of the solution along with storm-proofing watersheds. Legacy Roads and Trail Remediation Initiative funding is an investment in healthy forest ecosystems by decommissioning and maintaining problem roads and repair fish culverts. Funding will also has the potential to create high-skilled, family-wage jobs in rural communities.

We look forward to the final version of the FY09 Interior Appropriations bill providing $70 million in funding for the restoration of our national forest watersheds through the Legacy Roads and Trail Remediation Initiative.

Wildlands CPR is a member of the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative.