When it comes to salmon recovery, decommissioning and removing dams grabs the headlines. But decaying roads are equally damaging to endangered salmon populations and may just get the attention-and funding-they need.
In December, the Congress approved a $39.4 million expenditure to decommission, repair and maintain Forest Service roads throughout the country in order to protect community water sources and threatened, endangered and sensitive species.
A chronic lack of investment in aging forest roads endangers public lands, clean water and fish populations. Thousands of miles of Forest Service roads in Washington and other northwest states block salmon passage and are at risk of triggering destructive landslides. Sediment from these roads smother salmon and other fish eggs with sediment and dirty our drinking water.
Seasoned Congressman Norm Dicks stands at the helm of this initiative but relies on the brain trust and footwork of a diverse collection of interests committed to salmon recovery and watershed restoration. These parties include Washington state officials, Indian tribes of western Washington, Wildlands CPR and several other conservation groups in Washington and elsewhere around the west.
This $39.4 million investment is the largest direct allocation that the Forest Service has ever received for watershed restoration through road decommissioning. Rep. Dicks has spearheaded this effort because failures in Forest Service roads in Washington state have resulted in violations of the Clean Water Act; many of the agency's roads are in such disrepair that they don't even meet state road standards. The Forest Service estimates that it needs $300 million to decommission and repair its roads in Washington in order to meet the state's standards.
Nationally, the Forest Service estimates that they need to remove an estimated 186,000 miles of roads to bring the road system down to a manageable, maintainable system that still meets the needs of the agency and forest users. A 2003 Wildlands CPR study found that it would cost approximately $93 million per year for about 20 years to implement a national road removal plan. That $93 million would provide between 2,000-3,000 high-wage, high-skill jobs in rural communities, making such an appropriation good for the land, and good for the communities that depend on the land.
Dicks' appropriation is the first direct appropriation towards that long-term restoration goal and the first serious effort to address the massive backlog of maintenance for forest roads.
Wildlands CPR is part of the coalition that helped craft and build support for Dicks' proposal. Wildlands CPR recently contracted with Sue Gunn to represent the organization in this impressive coalition. Sue has a PhD in isotope geology and years of experience working on conservation appropriations and public land issues. Wildlands CPR brings experience with hands-on road decommissioning, funding such projects, and, perhaps most importantly, prompting cooperation among a diversity of interests. In Montana, Wildands CPR has helped bring restoration businesses, the Forest Service, universities, public agencies, labor unions and conservationists together to identify, prioritize and pursue state-supported restoration projects.
For more information on the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative:
- Contact Sue Gunn by emailing her at sue@wildlandscpr.org;
- Read the case statement for this initiative prepared by the Washington coalition;
- Visit the information-rich webpages on this initiative maintained by the Washington Department of Ecology;
- Read the House language by searching here for "H.R. 2643" and clicking on the "Capital Improvement and Maintenance" section;
- Read the Senate language by searching here for "S. 1696" and clicking on the "Capital Improvement and Maintenance" section.
- Read Senator Cantwell's letter to the Forest Service re: their roads program, the Forest Service response, and our assessment of their response.
- Read the National Forest Watershed Restoration Initiative Principles