Guest column: Road removal can boost jobs, economy, ecology
Public roads on Montana national forests provide access to important products and services, including timber, grazing, hunting, fishing, fire protection and hiking trailheads. Yet there are thousands of miles of national forest roads in Montana the U.S. Forest Service says it neither needs nor wants.
The Forest Service road system is overbuilt, and many of these roads serve no essential function today. They are doing large-scale economic and ecological damage.
A selective program of road removal, accompanied by remediation of roads that remain in place, could promote ecological and economic values, provide good jobs for heavy equipment operators and other forest workers, and can be pursued without compromising national forest access.
The U.S. House has approved funding for a limited version of such a program in its FY 2008 Forest Service budget. The Senate will vote on similar funds when it returns from its summer recess.
The nine national forests in Montana contain over 32,000 miles of system roads and at least 5,000 miles of non-system roads leftover from antiquated logging methods or unauthorized uses. Stretched out, these roads would take a driver from Helena to Chicago and back 12 times. On average, each square mile of Lolo National Forest land not legally roadless is crossed 2 1/2 times by roads.
It comes as no surprise that there is not enough money to maintain these roads given the huge and aging road network and declining Forest Service budgets. The Forest Service estimates that it receives only 20 percent of funds needed to maintain system roads to its own standards.
In 2005, the Forest Service had a $10.3 billion deferred maintenance and capital improvement backlog, with $700 million in Montana. Deteriorating and overbuilt road systems on National Forests are now recognized as a major contributor to water quality problems statewide.
The longer we wait to fix this problem, the more economic and ecological damage roads will cause. Poorly maintained roads cause several types of ecological damage and prevent our forests from delivering the full complement of ecological services to the regional economy. These roads serve, for example, as dispersal paths for noxious weeds and they disrupt wildlife and fish migrations.
But sediments are one of the worst problems. A recent study in western Montana found that an average mile of forest road regularly produced 17 to 18 tons of sediment, much of it showing up in our creeks and rivers. Worse, when severe storms hit, road-related landslides and road culvert failures produce 10 to 100 times more sediment.
For roads that need to stay in use, remediation is appropriate. Culvert repairs and other fixes can prevent the majority of sediments from reaching creeks and rivers. Repaired roads greatly reduce environmental harm but still require regular maintenance at significant cost.
The Forest Service says road maintenance costs up to $1,200 per mile annually. For unneeded and unwanted roads, a better solution is to remove the road and simply avoid the burden of future maintenance costs. Research has established that when work is performed correctly, sediments from roads are nearly eliminated within two years of removal.
Likely targets for removal include 16,000 miles of Montana's worst forest roads. These include 11,000 miles of so-called “system roads” on which the Forest Service has decided to prohibit or eliminate traffic and at least 5,000 miles of additional uninventoried, “non-system” roads. Recent Forest Service road decommissioning costs in Regions 1 and 4 average $5,000 per mile for system roads and $600 for non-system roads.
Investment in the repair and removal of the worst of Forest Service roads, however, makes great economic sense. Over the next decade, such a program would save taxpayers over $60 million in today's dollars in reduced maintenance costs alone. This is to say nothing of the vast and permanent environmental benefit to water quality, fisheries and wildlife.
Chris Frissell is an ecologist and fishery biologist working as senior staff scientist with the Pacific Rivers Council in Polson. Joe Kerkvliet is an economist with Northern Regional Office of The Wilderness Society in Bozeman.
