OLYMPIA, WA - Last year, Congress increased the budget for repairing or decommissioning old logging roads in the Northwest by 17 percent.  That money is now flowing into real projects on the ground.  Correspondent Tom Banse reports.

Crumbling logging roads riddle our national forests. The Forest Service has identified four thousand miles of old roads it wishes it could just take out in Washington State alone. Mary Scurlock is policy director for the Pacific Rivers Council in Portland. She personally visited West Coast members of Congress to ask for more money to fix or remove those roads.

Scurlock: “What we have been able to do even in these very tight economic times is to get folks to listen.”

A budget increase Congress approved paid for 80 miles of backwoods roads to be decommissioned in Oregon and Washington this year, along with maintenance or upgrades on nearly a 1000 other miles. Scurlock says the aim is to prevent road washouts and keep muddy debris out of salmon streams.

Scurlock: “The ultimate goal in any of these cases is to deliver the least amount of sediment to rivers and streams and to make the roads essentially storm-proof.”

In a few instances, the same loggers who carved the forest roads years ago are now being paid to tear them out.

On the web:

Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative

TVW coverage of April 04, 2008, Watershed Restoration & Forest Roads Symposium, Tacoma

Copyright 2008 KUOW

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