Borrowing a page from history and one of the most popular New Deal
programs, The Legacy Roads Restoration Initiative recently proposed a
program to create a $500M Forest Watershed Restoration Corps within the
National Forest Service. The Corps could be funded as part of the Economic
Stimulus Package currently being planned by Congress and President-Elect
Obama's Transition Team and would restore ecologically damaged forest
watersheds while creating 3,500 high-skill, family-wage jobs per year in
rural communities. The funding would be invested in the Forest Service's
Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative – 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 needed Forest Service roads.
The proposal was announced in conjunction with an oversight hearing on
green jobs and economic stimulus in the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee this morning. Nearly 100 individuals and organizations
from around the country, including retired Forest Service officials, labor
unions, and conservationists, have endorsed the program.
"This year, with the onset of the recession and job losses
skyrocketing, the coalition saw an opportunity to tackle two problems with
one solution," said Wildlands CPR Executive Director Bethanie Walder.
"President-elect Obama's economic stimulus package is not only a chance to
create high-skill green-collar jobs with long-term economic benefits, it
will also protect valuable resources — our forest watersheds and fisheries
— from degrading." The jobs proposed for the Forest Watershed Restoration
Corps would go to local workers in rural, resource-dependent communities.
"Many of the green-collar jobs currently being discussed would provide
much-needed urban jobs and focus on reducing our carbon footprint. This
proposal is a great companion to those programs – it would provide rural
jobs with an emphasis on restoring our public lands and water so they are
more resilient to climate change," said Dennis Daneke, Representative with
Carpenters Local 28 in Missoula, MT.
According to the Forest Service, more than 60 million Americans, in
3400 communities, get their drinking water from Forest Service watersheds.
"The first, and most important, step towards protecting clean drinking
water, productive fisheries and critical wildlife habitat is to take care
of the crumbling road system," said Emily Platt, Gifford Pinchot Task
Force Executive Director. "National forests in Washington alone have a
$300M backlog just to meet minimum clean water standards."
The Forest Service is estimated to have a $10B road maintenance
backlog. The new Forest Watershed Restoration Corps would invest $250M
annually for two years reclaiming roads that are no longer needed, fixing
culverts and performing critical maintenance on needed roads to ensure
long-term access for resource management and the public.
"Part of this country's crumbling infrastructure includes over 380,000
miles of decaying Forest Service logging roads" said Randi Spivak,
Executive Director of the American Lands Alliance. "Roads need maintenance
and maintenance costs money. Decommissioning unneeded roads, will save
millions, if not billions of taxpayer dollars in the long run."
One of the main obstacles to accomplishing the road decommissioning
work has been a lack of funding for the needed studies and planning.
"Eight years ago the Forest Service determined that it's road network
was nearly twice as large as it needed to be, and that they should
decommission up to 186,000 miles of roads by 2040," said Walder. "Here we
are, nearly a decade later, and they've barely begun the needed planning
and restoration work."
In addition to improving habitat and water quality, the proposed Forest
Watershed Restoration Corps would provide 3,500 direct high-skill jobs per
year in rural, resource dependent communities. Unlike the original
civilian conservation corps, which relied heavily on manual labor, the
road remediation work requires excavators, bulldozers and on-the-ground
inspectors, and dedicated engineering skills – the very same skills used
in originally building the roads.
The funding will also create staffing opportunities within the Forest
Service to implement the program. The $10B backlog will take decades to
remedy but this program will take a critical first step toward solving the
problem.
"These are exciting times, when people can get past the polarization
that has challenged public land management for so long. After all those
jobs versus the environment debates, it turns out that the color of money
and the color of environmental restoration are one and the same: green,"
said Daneke.
SOURCE: National Forest Service