Green jobs needed in rural areas, too
“Green jobs!” With the financial sector in trouble, the onset of the recession, and a new presidency imminent, it seems everyone is talking about them. Many of the discussions focus on programs aimed at reducing our carbon footprint through energy efficiency and alternative energy n primarily in urban areas. Those are important goals. But there is another green jobs program, equally as important, that can bring sorely needed, high-skilled, family-wage jobs to rural America, as well.
On Dec. 10, before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, University of Oregon professor Cassandra Moseley testified about the need for any economic stimulus package to create green jobs for rural communities, not just urban areas. Many of these jobs would be dedicated to planning and implementing projects that protect and restore federal forests and other public lands.
The National Watershed Restoration Initiative this month proposed a program to create a $500 million Forest Watershed Restoration Corps within the U.S. Forest Service. Nearly 100 individuals and organizations from around the country, including retired Forest Service officials, labor unions and conservationists, have already endorsed the program.
The corps could be funded as part of the economic stimulus package currently being planned by Congress and President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. It would restore ecologically damaged forest watersheds while creating 3,500 high-skill, family-wage jobs per year n primarily in rural communities.
The money would be invested in the Forest Service’s Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative n a program first funded in 2008 to protect and restore clean drinking water, fisheries and aquatic habitat by reclaiming unneeded roads, restoring fish passage, and performing critical maintenance on still-needed Forest Service roads. Funding Legacy Roads is an investment in clean water, healthy public lands and healthy rural communities.
The stimulus appropriations would provide $250 million annually for the Forest Service to address serious ecological problems with their road system. The Obama transition team has been talking about investing heavily in rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure. Forest Service roads are an enormous part of that infrastructure n the agency’s total road system is almost 10 times the size of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, and the Forest Service estimates up to a $10 billion road maintenance backlog.
This backlog cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually in environmental damage and emergency repairs. We can upgrade our needed roads by restoring fish passage and reducing sedimentation, while simultaneously reclaiming unneeded roads. This will save taxpayer dollars over the long term, while also dramatically increasing watershed health, habitat quality, fisheries and wildlife, and recreational opportunities. And the only way to do this work is with high-wage, skilled woods workers and equipment operators.
According to the Forest Service, more than 60 million Americans, in 3,400 communities, get their drinking water from national forest watersheds. The lack of funding for roads is the primary obstacle to reducing the road maintenance backlog.
Funding Legacy Roads would take a big bite out of this problem by getting rid of roads we don’t need and can’t afford to maintain, and making sure that remaining roads are redesigned so they are cheaper to maintain with less damage to streams. Failing to fund this work will ensure that the backlog continues to grow and that roads increasingly jeopardize clean water, fish and wildlife. Scientists and engineers estimate the cost to fix the Forest Service road system in Oregon alone to be about $1 billion.
Besides markedly improving habitat and water quality, Legacy Roads would provide 3,500 direct high-skill jobs per year in rural, resource dependent communities. Road remediation work requires excavators, bulldozers, on-the-ground inspectors and dedicated engineering skills. These are the very same skills used in road construction.
The program would also fund the Forest Service professional jobs needed to implement the program. The upshot: an investment that is necessary, if we are to preserve and restore water quality, fish and wildlife in the U.S., can also bring new jobs and businesses to rural communities. These jobs are truly green.
Bethanie Walder, executive director of Wildlands CPR, and Mary Scurlock, policy director for Pacific Rivers Council, represent the National Watershed Restoration Initiative, an ad-hoc coalition promoting green jobs through watershed restoration. Dennis Daneke is a representative of the Carpenters Local 28, in Missoula, and participates in the Missoula area blue-green coalition.
