Washington Hunter
Well-known member
Workers' jobs and vacationers' scenic destinations fall victim as backcountry routes are forsaken
Thursday, July 28, 2005
MICHAEL MILSTEIN
The Oregonian
BATTLE GROUND, Wash. -- Phil Thomas has cleared, graded and repaired national forest roads for 30 years, but now he's been eliminated. With him, so will the dirt and gravel roads Americans rely on to reach their favorite forest hunting spot, trail or campsite.
National forests including the Gifford Pinchot, where Thomas maintains roads among the mountains northeast of Portland, can no longer afford spaghetti-like road networks built with money that rolled in during the timber boom days.
It's also happening in the Mount Hood and other national forests, erasing access to remote haunts by returning lands to their wild state -- an irony under a White House that favors industrial access to public lands. The Bush administration last year stoked controversy by dropping formal protections for undeveloped, roadless lands. But fading Forest Service budgets under the same administration are quietly letting roaded lands become roadless ones.
Thomas' job has been abolished, and he will be transferred or laid off this fall. Dump trucks and graders have been sold. A handful of people are left to handle the Washington forest's 4,000 miles of roads -- enough to stretch to Texas and back. They couldn't get to it all if they worked around the clock.
"Right now it's just disaster control, let's put it that way," said Thomas, 65, taking a break from reshaping a road with his grader.
National forest roads in Oregon and Washington measure twice as long as the entire interstate highway system. Forest managers are reducing maintenance across thousands of miles, and, nationwide, only 30 percent of passenger car roads will be maintained to current standards this year. Result: Roads will wash out, grow over and disappear in the next few years.
"We are creating de facto roadless areas," said Ron Freeman, public services staff officer for the Gifford Pinchot. "Things are going back to nature . . . you can't stop things from growing."
In the Mount Hood National Forest, about half of the forest's 3,450 miles of roads will be gradually lost and closed as managers devote limited money to only the most essential, heavily used routes.
That may be preferable for those who prefer solitude to internal combustion. Conservation groups have long argued for closure of roads that slice and dice wildlife habitat and pour silt into fish streams. But it angers local communities where many know the back roads like their own neighborhoods.
"This is public land, and these are multiple use areas, and they should be open to the public," said Larry Sowa, a commissioner in Clackamas County. The Forest Service actions will "turn it all back into wilderness areas."
"If Congress doesn't want to allow enough timber sales to keep those roads open, they need to come up with some other way of paying for it," he said.
The closures have other consequences, as well:
Forests cannot afford to properly dismantle roads, which can cost as much as building them. Antiquated culverts block migrating fish and remain in place, while storms wash away roads, sometimes casting rock and dirt downhill to ruin fish-bearing streams.
Logging is less likely to take place because it must generate high revenue to pay for rebuilding decrepit roads. Today's logging, however, brings in less money because it increasingly involves thinning small, crowded trees to reduce fire hazards and improve wildlife habitat, yielding less wood.
Driving for pleasure has long been one of the most popular uses of back roads. Fewer passable roads will funnel cars, and activities such as roadside camping, into smaller slices of public lands.
"The motoring public has basically ridden on the back of timber to have access to a lot of these places," said Richard Sowa, regional director of engineering for the Forest Service. "Now it's time to pay the piper. The public has gotten used to driving around on the national forests and having somebody else pay the bill. That money's gone now."
The Forest Service in Oregon and Washington receives less than half of the $118 million it needs annually to maintain forest roads to current standards. Its maintenance backlog for roads has grown to $1.1 billion, about one-tenth of it considered crucial to public health and safety or environmental protection.
Old strategy, new reality
The dilemma evolved as the Forest Service in the last half-century grew into one of the largest roadbuilding agencies around, engineering roads into steep, remote reaches mainly to reach lucrative timber stands.
Congress set up funding so millions of dollars of public logging revenue went to construct and upgrade roads. National forests had as many road workers as some cities. Engineers built the roads to stand up to future logging traffic, paving many remote stretches in the rainy Northwest.
Logging companies also shelled out money to repair and maintain them.
"The public thinks they were paved for them," Freeman said. "They weren't. They were paved for timber hauling."
In the 1950s, about 1,000 miles of roads laced the Mount Hood National Forest. That stretched into nearly 4,000 miles by 1990, although about 400 miles have since been reclaimed.
National forests in Oregon and Washington today contain about 92,500 miles of road -- enough to circle the globe three times. About three-quarters of them are in Oregon.
The strategy to pay for forest roads with timber dollars was ideal at one time.
But the federal land logging binge in the Northwest crashed. In the 1980s cutting collided with federal protections for the northern spotted owl, salmon and other wildlife. Logging in Oregon and Washington national forests fell more than 90 percent, and cash for roads collapsed with it.
Road maintenance funding for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest has dropped about seven-fold since 1990, from $4.2 million to an expected $620,000 in fiscal 2006. That's about one-third of what the forest needs to maintain all its roads.
But all those paved roads, with an average maintenance cost of more than $3,000 a year -- some 20 times more than dirt roads, keep the price high. The forest's backlog of road repair needs has climbed to $73 million, especially as costly bridges and paved roads have decayed.
"Engineers said paving is cheaper over time if you're trying to handle logging traffic," Freeman says in a car jouncing over cracks and potholes on a forest road. "Now, a paved road that's falling apart is an even bigger liability."
Last year a log bridge's supports rotted away and left 25 miles of road inaccessible. It forced cancellation of a contract for commercial bough harvesting worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the forest.
Rethinking the roads
The deepening shortfall has forced the Gifford Pinchot into a drastic rethinking of its road system. About 820 miles of road are designated as appropriate for passenger cars, with proper signs and stripes. But managers say they may now have only enough money to hold about 360 miles to that standard.
"The only way you can reduce road costs is to reduce maintenance levels," Freeman said.
They will focus funding on a few main routes through the forest, dropping maintenance on others to the level of generally untended dirt roads. Half the road crew will be laid off. The Mount Hood National Forest earlier this year eliminated its entire road maintenance staff to save money, turning to private contractors instead.
The wet west side of the Cascade Range is especially hard hit. A road crew might get to side roads perhaps every five years, at best.
The Forest Service has long handed out road dollars based on the number of road miles in each national forest, but may now base it instead on recreation use and the environmental harm posed by deteriorating roads.
What little maintenance that gets done won't be as effective, Freeman figures, because it will depend on workers who don't know the forest as well as longtime employees such as Thomas.
"We're losing our skill base and our knowledge of the road system," he said. "They're putting their heart and soul into maintaining this road system, and they can't do it anymore."
The forest has closed and reclaimed about 400 miles of road in the past 10 years, yanking out culverts and removing dirt so it does not clog streams. But that depends on cash to do it right.
The Mount Hood National Forest calculated that it could no more afford to decommission many roads than to maintain them.
"It's just a truly a shame that things are going the way they are," said Thomas, sitting in his grader and staring down the road. He pauses for a moment, and says, "I don't have a position, so I can speak my mind."
Michael Milstein: 503-294-7689; [email protected]
©2005 The Oregonian
Thursday, July 28, 2005
MICHAEL MILSTEIN
The Oregonian
BATTLE GROUND, Wash. -- Phil Thomas has cleared, graded and repaired national forest roads for 30 years, but now he's been eliminated. With him, so will the dirt and gravel roads Americans rely on to reach their favorite forest hunting spot, trail or campsite.
National forests including the Gifford Pinchot, where Thomas maintains roads among the mountains northeast of Portland, can no longer afford spaghetti-like road networks built with money that rolled in during the timber boom days.
It's also happening in the Mount Hood and other national forests, erasing access to remote haunts by returning lands to their wild state -- an irony under a White House that favors industrial access to public lands. The Bush administration last year stoked controversy by dropping formal protections for undeveloped, roadless lands. But fading Forest Service budgets under the same administration are quietly letting roaded lands become roadless ones.
Thomas' job has been abolished, and he will be transferred or laid off this fall. Dump trucks and graders have been sold. A handful of people are left to handle the Washington forest's 4,000 miles of roads -- enough to stretch to Texas and back. They couldn't get to it all if they worked around the clock.
"Right now it's just disaster control, let's put it that way," said Thomas, 65, taking a break from reshaping a road with his grader.
National forest roads in Oregon and Washington measure twice as long as the entire interstate highway system. Forest managers are reducing maintenance across thousands of miles, and, nationwide, only 30 percent of passenger car roads will be maintained to current standards this year. Result: Roads will wash out, grow over and disappear in the next few years.
"We are creating de facto roadless areas," said Ron Freeman, public services staff officer for the Gifford Pinchot. "Things are going back to nature . . . you can't stop things from growing."
In the Mount Hood National Forest, about half of the forest's 3,450 miles of roads will be gradually lost and closed as managers devote limited money to only the most essential, heavily used routes.
That may be preferable for those who prefer solitude to internal combustion. Conservation groups have long argued for closure of roads that slice and dice wildlife habitat and pour silt into fish streams. But it angers local communities where many know the back roads like their own neighborhoods.
"This is public land, and these are multiple use areas, and they should be open to the public," said Larry Sowa, a commissioner in Clackamas County. The Forest Service actions will "turn it all back into wilderness areas."
"If Congress doesn't want to allow enough timber sales to keep those roads open, they need to come up with some other way of paying for it," he said.
The closures have other consequences, as well:
Forests cannot afford to properly dismantle roads, which can cost as much as building them. Antiquated culverts block migrating fish and remain in place, while storms wash away roads, sometimes casting rock and dirt downhill to ruin fish-bearing streams.
Logging is less likely to take place because it must generate high revenue to pay for rebuilding decrepit roads. Today's logging, however, brings in less money because it increasingly involves thinning small, crowded trees to reduce fire hazards and improve wildlife habitat, yielding less wood.
Driving for pleasure has long been one of the most popular uses of back roads. Fewer passable roads will funnel cars, and activities such as roadside camping, into smaller slices of public lands.
"The motoring public has basically ridden on the back of timber to have access to a lot of these places," said Richard Sowa, regional director of engineering for the Forest Service. "Now it's time to pay the piper. The public has gotten used to driving around on the national forests and having somebody else pay the bill. That money's gone now."
The Forest Service in Oregon and Washington receives less than half of the $118 million it needs annually to maintain forest roads to current standards. Its maintenance backlog for roads has grown to $1.1 billion, about one-tenth of it considered crucial to public health and safety or environmental protection.
Old strategy, new reality
The dilemma evolved as the Forest Service in the last half-century grew into one of the largest roadbuilding agencies around, engineering roads into steep, remote reaches mainly to reach lucrative timber stands.
Congress set up funding so millions of dollars of public logging revenue went to construct and upgrade roads. National forests had as many road workers as some cities. Engineers built the roads to stand up to future logging traffic, paving many remote stretches in the rainy Northwest.
Logging companies also shelled out money to repair and maintain them.
"The public thinks they were paved for them," Freeman said. "They weren't. They were paved for timber hauling."
In the 1950s, about 1,000 miles of roads laced the Mount Hood National Forest. That stretched into nearly 4,000 miles by 1990, although about 400 miles have since been reclaimed.
National forests in Oregon and Washington today contain about 92,500 miles of road -- enough to circle the globe three times. About three-quarters of them are in Oregon.
The strategy to pay for forest roads with timber dollars was ideal at one time.
But the federal land logging binge in the Northwest crashed. In the 1980s cutting collided with federal protections for the northern spotted owl, salmon and other wildlife. Logging in Oregon and Washington national forests fell more than 90 percent, and cash for roads collapsed with it.
Road maintenance funding for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest has dropped about seven-fold since 1990, from $4.2 million to an expected $620,000 in fiscal 2006. That's about one-third of what the forest needs to maintain all its roads.
But all those paved roads, with an average maintenance cost of more than $3,000 a year -- some 20 times more than dirt roads, keep the price high. The forest's backlog of road repair needs has climbed to $73 million, especially as costly bridges and paved roads have decayed.
"Engineers said paving is cheaper over time if you're trying to handle logging traffic," Freeman says in a car jouncing over cracks and potholes on a forest road. "Now, a paved road that's falling apart is an even bigger liability."
Last year a log bridge's supports rotted away and left 25 miles of road inaccessible. It forced cancellation of a contract for commercial bough harvesting worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the forest.
Rethinking the roads
The deepening shortfall has forced the Gifford Pinchot into a drastic rethinking of its road system. About 820 miles of road are designated as appropriate for passenger cars, with proper signs and stripes. But managers say they may now have only enough money to hold about 360 miles to that standard.
"The only way you can reduce road costs is to reduce maintenance levels," Freeman said.
They will focus funding on a few main routes through the forest, dropping maintenance on others to the level of generally untended dirt roads. Half the road crew will be laid off. The Mount Hood National Forest earlier this year eliminated its entire road maintenance staff to save money, turning to private contractors instead.
The wet west side of the Cascade Range is especially hard hit. A road crew might get to side roads perhaps every five years, at best.
The Forest Service has long handed out road dollars based on the number of road miles in each national forest, but may now base it instead on recreation use and the environmental harm posed by deteriorating roads.
What little maintenance that gets done won't be as effective, Freeman figures, because it will depend on workers who don't know the forest as well as longtime employees such as Thomas.
"We're losing our skill base and our knowledge of the road system," he said. "They're putting their heart and soul into maintaining this road system, and they can't do it anymore."
The forest has closed and reclaimed about 400 miles of road in the past 10 years, yanking out culverts and removing dirt so it does not clog streams. But that depends on cash to do it right.
The Mount Hood National Forest calculated that it could no more afford to decommission many roads than to maintain them.
"It's just a truly a shame that things are going the way they are," said Thomas, sitting in his grader and staring down the road. He pauses for a moment, and says, "I don't have a position, so I can speak my mind."
Michael Milstein: 503-294-7689; [email protected]
©2005 The Oregonian
