[coastalcutt]

Here's an interesting article from today's Seattle Times on the ominous implications of the huge backlog of forest road repairs and the budget shortfall in the USFS. CC As forest roads crumble, access to woods slips away By Warren Cornwall Seattle Times staff reporter Deep in the woods near Granite Falls, Bob and Deb Roth have their little piece of heaven. But their road is going to hell. The federal Forest Service road, the only route from their mountain home to the outside world, is sliding toward the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River. At times, it has gotten so bad that they worried the propane-delivery truck wouldn't make it. "If it does go out," said Bob Roth, "I don't know what we would do." The Forest Service offers sympathy, but little more. It helped smooth the road over the summer, but permanent repairs could cost $1 million, twice the annual road-repair budget for the entire Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. And there are plenty of other forest roads needing work. The Forest Service simply has too many roads and not enough money. In national forests all over Washington, roads are crumbling, washing away or clogging with underbrush. In the Cascade Mountains alone, hundreds of miles of roads have essentially been abandoned. Routes that Honda Civics could cruise a few years ago will soon be passable only by pickups and SUVs. In some cases, the Forest Service is intentionally neglecting roads or tearing them out. In others, it's fighting a losing battle as it tries to keep up with too many roads. On top of it all, residential subdivisions are being built along some of the same roads, straining them even further. For hikers, campers and other users who have come to expect nearly unbridled access to the mountains of Washington, the situation means countless acres of backcountry could soon be much harder to reach. Forest managers are forced to think less ambitiously about the role of roads in the woods. Even for environmentalists, who usually have little love for roads cut through the wilderness, the neglect spells trouble for fragile streams and fish runs. "I think it's a time bomb," said Kevin Garrity, a Sierra Club volunteer who works on road issues. Maze through the forest Over the past century, Washington was carved with a maze of forest roads — about 20,000 miles of them — built in the heyday of logging to get the timber out of the woods. People followed. Cabins went up. Hikers could use the roads to drive to their favorite trails, or drivers could just soak in the scenery from behind the wheel. Now every road is someone's favorite, forest rangers say. But when logging in national forests dried up in the early 1990s, so did the money to maintain the roads. Now there's an estimated $1.1 billion backlog on repairs to national forest roads in Washington and Oregon. Nationwide, the backlog is estimated at more than $10 billion. In response, the Forest Service has intentionally dismantled some roads, or rangers quietly close them and let nature take over. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which encircles Mount St. Helens, has stopped regular maintenance on more than 400 miles of forest roads that once were kept smooth enough for passenger cars. In the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, which reaches from the Canadian border to Mount Rainier, at least half of the roads now open to cars could be left to deteriorate, said Wayne Hamilton, the forest's chief roads manager. "I'm contemplating that we will spend the money we have on the highest-traveled roads, and the other ones, when we run out of money, that's the end of the work," he said. An obstacle for climbers Last spring, rock climber Matt Perkins learned firsthand how the Forest Service's budget woes can threaten favorite roads. He and some climbing buddies were making their first trip of the season to some beloved, glacier-polished cliffs high above Darrington when they drove up on a massive hole gouged from the road by a rockslide. That had happened before, but then the road was quickly repaired. This time, the Forest Service decided the road would stay closed, with the cliffs lying miles beyond the damage. "I think that would have been the end of that as a climbing area," said Perkins, a Seattle attorney. The agency finally reversed course after a barrage of phone calls from climbers. But the Forest Service crew mustered only a quick, cheap repair. Fish at risk As many roads are neglected, the result can be deadly to fragile fish runs. Old, rusty culverts collapse, and tons of debris wash into streams. Dirt roads leak sand into rivers, threatening to cover and suffocate fish eggs. In the late 1990s, the state Department of Ecology asked the Forest Service to do something about its crumbling roads. In response, the Forest Service promised that by 2015 it would fix every road hurting rivers and streams. Last March it finally admitted it couldn't keep that promise. Repairs could cost $310 million and take a century to complete, the agency said. "It's just how it is," said Tom Erkert of the Forest Service, who oversees road maintenance on national forests in Washington and Oregon. Ecology officials say they plan to talk to the state's congressional delegation to help find money, and they are considering legal action to make the Forest Service repair the roads. But they also acknowledge the situation the Forest Service is in. "There is no new money out there. The question is who are you going to beg, borrow and steal from," said Stephen Bernath, a senior policy analyst with Ecology. Development challenge In the midst of the budget crunch, a new challenge is emerging just over the Cascades in Cle Elum, Kittitas County. Hundreds of homes are going up in forests once owned by timber companies. And many of them rely on Forest Service roads built to handle log trucks and the occasional hiker. One of the new residents is Gary Flagler, an auto technician who commutes to Kirkland every day in a Mazda along Forest Service Road 3350, just outside Cle Elum. It's a teeth-chattering ride, with potholes and a washboard surface. "There isn't anyone, probably, from Ellensburg to the top of the [Snoqualmie] Pass that hasn't at one time or another heard about Forest Service road 3350," Flagler said. "Its been a thorn in everybody's side." Recently, a subdivision developer under pressure from the Forest Service paved part of the road — just up to the entrance of the development. But there are more homes going in farther up, near where Flagler lives. The Forest Service has asked Kittitas County to take over a long stretch of the road and maintain it, but the county says it can't afford to do that. That's a familiar situation for the Roths, whose road above the Stillaguamish River is falling apart. The Forest Service has told the Roths and about 25 other landowners that the agency would gladly hand over the failing road. But the neighbors can't afford to keep it up, either. So far Bob Roth has spent $30,000 buying a bulldozer to keep the road open. But "we can't say what's going to happen when the rains come," he said. Wasted money? Even with all its woes, the Forest Service has been finding it difficult to shed some old habits. While many roads are all but abandoned, critics complain the agency is wasting money to keep open other roads it can't afford. A good example is Road 26, a narrow, paved path through the foothills north of Mount St. Helens. After floods in 1996, the Forest Service spent $6 million to rebuild it, using money the Federal Highway Administration doles out to fix roads ruined by natural disasters. Last year, only two years after repairs were completed, the Forest Service realized it couldn't afford to maintain Road 26 once it fixed it. "In retrospect, I'm not sure it [the repair] was the best thing to do," said Dean Lawrence, an engineering technician with the Forest Service. Some national forests, including the Gifford Pinchot, are now beginning to envision a more modest future. The Olympic National Forest plans to demolish 750 miles of roads, though it doesn't have the money to do it all yet. In the Skokomish River basin, a coalition of local governments, timber, tribal and environmental groups are advising the Forest Service how to best remove or repair the roads. "It's an example of where there's actually progress being made. The roads are becoming less of a problem because of a concerted effort," said Mike Anderson of the Wilderness Society. But the agency hasn't fully confronted the problem, critics charge. Jim Furnish, second in command of the Forest Service during the Clinton administration, says many national forests still cling to unaffordable road systems. That raises the danger of environmental problems, because roads are neglected rather than properly dismantled, he said. "If you just start spending less everywhere, then it's like the water starts building up behind the dam," he said. "Unless something changes, something bad is going to happen." The Forest Service's Erkert said forest officials often fear public backlash if they try to let some roads decay. He wonders whether the agency will come to grips with what it needs to do: travel back to before the heyday of logging, when most of the national forests weren't reachable by car. "To me, it's almost like we have to go back to post-World War II era, in terms of what the transportation system looked like," he said.

[Scrooge]

Thanks. That's a good article. Unfortunately, any response verges on the edge of the political. All of us millions of Northwest recreationists wonder why some small part of the billions of dollars of our taxes can't be spent on things we do want, instead of on things we mostly don't want or don't care about. Even without the tax money, I sometimes wonder if there's not enough private (and I don't mean corporate) money and interest out here to take over much of the job of forest road maintenance ........ if it could be done without bureaucratic obstacles. You look at how much in the way of "roadbuilding" one small segment of the recreationist population, motorbikers, manage to do, and it makes me wonder if there's not room for the same kind of takeover of road maintenance that is going on in trail maintenance. In a way, it's the same kind of thing that's being done with protection of the land by groups like the Nature Conservancy. If our government won't do it, and we want it done, then we'll have to do it ourselves. Mobilizing the necessary resources may be difficult, but it is possible. Again, I apologize for the politics. Perhaps this thread ought to be moved to Stewardship, where we've acknowledged that almost any sort of discussion is impossible without assessing the role of government. David

[touron]

[Dave Workman]

The national forests belong to everyone, not just the bureaucrats at the USFS who can't seem to make ends meet with the money they get., IMHO. Maybe those guys would like to see the national forests revert back to the days prior to WWII, jut to keep people out, so peole won't be able to see what they're NOT doing as stewards of our land. I've been digging around the USFS for a couple of years, and there are a lot of people wondering just what they DO spend the money on, because nobody can quite figure it out. Trails? You guys answer that one. Campgrounds? Doesn't look that way. Roads? Surely you jest (unless speaking of that boondoggle they're going to perform on the MFK Road.) Salaries and benefits? Hmmmmm Forest fire fighting? Pretty sure of that, but the reported costs seem sometimes far in excess of what costs ought to be.

[MtnGoat]

USFS has over time become populated with folks at all levels who will use any means to keep anything but foot traffic off our land and who do not seem to understand their positions do not exist to serve one narrow environmental interpretation of land usage. the article points out some roads are administratively let go intentionally, as a backdoor closure method. later they are claimed to be too far gone to fix....after letting them get that way on purpose

[coastalcutt]

[jimmymac]

I would suggest that this issue is a big deal for hikers, if not for those who do extended backpacks. It only becomes "political" to the extent that we expect perpetual maintenance of logging roads for the benefit of recreational use. I see this as an almost classic case of assets (logging roads) being acquired by the USFS (us) in exchange for contributions from entities (timber sale purchasers) benefitting from the creation of the assets. The building of the roads is the tip of the iceberg; perpetual maintenance of those roads is the part of the iceberg that is producing the predictable crisis we're seeing today. Over the last few decades, our ability to take casual dayhikes to many locations has been riding on the coattails of timber-related investments. Maintenance to those assets, including increased environmental stewardship requirements, is a cost center without a home. Even if timber sales continued at past levels, the arguably ethical transfer of new revenue to the maintenance of old roads would simply delay the inevitable. Managing assets involve acquisition costs, maintenance costs and disposal costs/receipts. Retiring what were essentially built as temporary spurs for specific timber sales is not something that gives me a lot of heartache. Theoretically, those roads provide value in terms of fire suppression access, but when push comes to shove, their maintenance costs would be better spent on mainlines and selected trailhead access roads. Mid-slope spurs are the most expensive to maintain, and in fire suppression they are often too dangerous to defend. Our inability to maintain all forest roads is certainly not surprising, and the prioritizing it requires is not a bad thing. As a hiker, the larger problem I see is justifying the diversion of general treasury funds to support a leisure activity with a shrinking constituency.

[Conrad]

[Dave Workman]

Conrad, this may come as something of a news flash, but hikers don't own the national forest exclusively, and there are may other recreational users who depend upon those roads to provide access to land that is equally theirs. Campers, kayakers, hunters, fishermen, berry pickers, bird watchers, photographers, trappers and disabled sight-seers, the latter for whom a leisurely drive or more likely a ride while others drive is the only semblance of nature they get to enjoy; they all use the national forests, and all have an equal stake out there. It seems rather cavalier, if not downright elitist, to ignore their interests, or needs, just because one happens to have functional legs. There is much truth to what MtnGoat suggests; perfectly good roads that might require minimum maintenance are being ditched and blocked; other secondary roads that might need more maintenance are simply abandoned and left to the elements, perhaps a culvert pulled here and there, resulting in washouts that widen the chasm. What a waste. I argued against closing the MFK road from the get-go. I live in North Bend, and used to go all the way back to Hardscrabble and the DMG trailhead, even hunting up there a couple of years. I think what they're planning is a horrible mis-allocation of my money; paving the road all the way to the gate. Pure bonehead.

[Scrooge]

[Conrad]

Well, I'll try not to escalate the insulting language, but I'm willing to return some of what I get: Dave, "this may come as something of a news flash", but I didn't claim "hikers own the national forest". And it's not "ignoring the interests" of the disabled etc., or "elitist", to argue for some roadless areas. Enough people (and not only those who hike themselves) value the existence of roadlessly wild country to make that a legitimate public interest too, and still leave lots of public land to your other uses. In other words, the fact that you're one of the "equal owners" of public land doesn't mean that the government owes you roads everywhere. Because, other "equal owners" place value on there not being roads everywhere (especially when it means taxes for roads they never use). So the reasonable accomodation of the different owners' wants is to make some areas roaded and some roadless. As for what's "downright elitist": Only HC vehicles could practically get to the end of the MFK, a few masochist LC-driver exceptions notwithstanding. Not many of your "disabled sight-seers" out for a "leisurely drive", I expect. Which means most LC drivers lost the opportunity for a quiet walk (away from cars) in that direction. From my perspective, HC drivers are more of an "elite" than LC drivers who want to take a quiet walk (which walk is, of course, also available to the HC drivers). But I don't know if anything I say can overcome your "mental block" that equates desiring roadless areas with elitism.

[Dayhike Mike]

Don't even get into the low clearance vs. high clearance debate. That's pointless. Should society replace all the flathead screws with philips head screws because you only have a philips head screwdriver? Or (thinking big) buy you a boat and trailer so you can use the boat ramps and waterways? (tongue in cheek) Bootstraps man...grab on and start pulling...

[Conrad]

[MtnGoat]

[MtnGoat]