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Department of Ecology News Release - August 24, 2010
10-212
OLYMPIA -- Now that summer temperatures have melted much of the snowpack in the high elevations of Washington’s national forests, heavy equipment is rumbling along moving rocks and dirt. Forestry work continues, but not like it has in the past. Workers are not building roads; they are restoring the forest.
The restoration work is happening in the vast network of national forest roads left behind from decades of timber harvesting. The problem is that mud and runoff from deteriorating national forest roads threatens clean water, salmon runs and Puget Sound.
The jobs and the environmental benefit come to Washington thanks to $15.2 million in federal funding given to the U.S. Forest Service over the past three years. The funding, through the Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (Legacy Roads and Trails), provides the U.S. Forest Service with the resources to grow green, family-wage jobs in Washington’s national forests while restoring our forest watersheds and fisheries.
Legacy Roads and Trails funding started as a result of the work of a coalition of 18 environmental, recreation, and fishing groups, tribes and state agencies who joined forces in 2007. The coalition created the Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative (WWRI) and soon gained critical help from their champion, Rep. Dicks, who served as the Chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. The congressman launched the new Legacy Roads and Trails program, specifically addressing critical restoration work in areas where forest roads pose risks to water quality and threatened or endangered wildlife species.
“This is a win-win situation for people and for our natural resources -- salmon and the forest,” said Rep. Dicks. He noted that “While our National Forests have always been an important source of good, family-wage jobs in many of our communities, harvest reductions have presented challenges for many rural economies. These new jobs will help put people back to work while they make tangible contributions to environmental restoration.”
Rep. Dicks noted that the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee approved another $90 million nationwide for the Legacy Road and Trails program in the next fiscal year, ensuring a continued level of funding for the work in Washington forests.
Forest Service economists estimate that watershed restoration work results in 12 direct jobs per $1 million spent and one indirect job induced from every direct job created. Therefore, for each $1 million spent, 24 jobs are created.
In Washington state, federal Legacy Roads and Trails funding provided $3.4 million in 2008; $3.7 million in 2009; and $8.1 million in 2010. This translates into 81 jobs for 2008, 89 jobs for 2009 and 194 jobs for 2010.
Legacy Roads funding protects water quality and fish and wildlife habitat by repairing or reclaiming the vast legacy of old, decaying forest roads. The failing roads create muddy water and warmer water temperatures. They block fish passage and impede wildlife migration.
“It is powerful to see the positive results this coalition has produced for our state. The federal investment is hitting the ground and helping make progress toward clean water,” said Stephen Bernath, Department of Ecology forest policy lead. He explained that the initiative specifically directs that funding be used to restore natural hydrologic and aquatic conditions and to protect drinking water quality and stocks of threatened or endangered fish.
Sue Gunn, director of restoration campaign and director of Wildlands CPR, said: “Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has articulated a new restoration vision for our national forests. The restoration goal is to make national forests more resilient to harm from our changing climate, and to protect and restore clean water. Legacy Roads and Trails is a key program to implement this vision. Clean water is critical for the fresh water supplies of millions of Americans. Clean water also protects and enhances fish and wildlife habitat and populations.”
Anna Jackson, environmental policy coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), said, “The condition of forest roads can significantly affect stream quality. With this continued federal funding, and investment by state and private forest landowners, we will continue making important progress toward water-quality and habitat conditions that support healthy fish populations.”
Olympic National Forest
The Olympic National Forest defines itself as a restoration forest and it is on the leading edge of this work. Healthy watersheds are a key goal for the Olympic Peninsula forest. Across the peninsula, past soil disturbance activities have deteriorated areas making them susceptible to slope failures and erosion. Some of these activities include older roads built on steep erosive slopes using techniques that would be unacceptable today. More than 60 percent of sites forestry experts have examined have erosion problems that affect water quality and fish habitat.
Funding story
Besides the $90 million nationwide recommended by the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee for the next fiscal year, the current fiscal year has already received $90 million nationally, making 2010 a breakthrough year for Legacy Roads and Trails funding. The total equals the combined amount of the first two years of the program. Twenty million dollars of this went to the Forest Service’s Region 6, which includes Washington and Oregon. Of the $8.1million allocated to Washington this year, $3.8 million went to the Olympic National Forest, and $2.7 million of that went to the South Fork of the Skokomish watershed restoration project, making this the biggest allocation of Legacy Roads funding for any single project in the nation.
The environmental problem
Abandoned and deteriorating roads in Washington’s national forests are a huge, neglected problem due to prolonged underfunding and loss of revenue sources to maintain these roads by the federal government.
Gunn says there is a need to right-size the forest road system. There are 380,000 miles of national forest roads in the U.S., severely impacting on our forest ecosystems and unaffordable to maintain. This distance is enough to circle the world 15 times.
Roads increase peak flows by impeding water infiltration to the forest floor and expanding the drainage network. They increase surface runoff that sends sediments to streams. Roads trigger landslides from culvert or road failures. Roads block or disrupt natural transport of materials such as large wood – needed by salmon, fragment landscapes – reducing available habitat. They alter wildlife movement and act as a vector for invasive species and plant pathogens.
Of the thousands of miles of U.S. Forest Service roads that need to be improved or decommissioned in Washington, two-thirds of the problem roads drain into Puget Sound. Fixing our national forest roads is critical to watershed health throughout the state, particularly Puget Sound.
The Department of Ecology, which is delegated to implement the federal Clean Water Act, has a long-term relationship with the Forest Service regarding non-point pollution from forest practices. Under an agreement Ecology and the Forest Service signed in 2000, Washington’s forest practice rules are the minimum standard that national forests must meet to protect water quality. The agreement focuses on developing an inventory of Forest Service roads and meeting road maintenance obligations by 2016.
The people who are working on this problem
Washington Watershed Restoration Initiative is a coalition of 18 groups including state agencies, tribes, conservation, recreation, fishing groups. It is working with Rep. Dicks, Rep. Inslee, Sen. Cantwell and others in Congress to champion forest watershed restoration in Washington state and on Forest Service lands nationally. It has challenged Region 6 of the Forest Service to right-size its road system as part of the watershed restoration effort.
Coalition members include Alpine Lakes Protection Society, American Whitewater, Cascade Chapter Sierra Club, Conservation Northwest, Gifford Pinchot Task Force, North Cascades Conservation Council, Olympic Forest Coalition, Pacific Rivers Council, Pilchuck Audubon Society, The Mountaineers, The Wilderness Society, Trout Unlimited, Upper Columbia United Tribes, Washington State Department of Ecology, Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington Trails Association, Washington Wilderness Coalition and Wildlands CPR.
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