White Paper by David R. Bunting, Packwood, Washington. Concerned Citizen and ex-Gifford Pinchot National Forest Engineering Staff, Registered Professional Civil Engineer and Land Surveyor, Washington and Oregon.
April, 2018 still being updated
Use of large areas of National Forest land is being lost because forest roads are made undriveable by weather damage, and the U.S. Forest Service is not repairing them.
First, I have seen reports by Forest Service Washington Office (must have been retired) officers that the employees responsible for handling the requests for funds to the Dept. of Agriculture, are opposed to public use of the National Forests, that they desire turning National Forests essentially into National Parks, where of course freedom of the public to use the forest is harshly limited. I have heard and seen statements of high level Forest Service officers talking of “reducing our footprint.” Reducing our footprint literally means reducing our use of the forests, and is not a goal ever approved by anyone. I don’t want my footprint reduced, do you? I want to be free to put my footprint as I’ve always put it, don’t you? Yes, there is skulduggery, trickery intending to reduce our free use of the forests, in the reduction of road maintenance funding.
Second, the roads are fully professionally engineered much the same as highways to be permanent, safe, easily-maintained roads, very expensively constructed- costing typically a quarter million dollars per mile in today’s dollars- just the crushed aggregate gravel surfacing was $100,000 per mile- and located using responsible land management principles to serve whole drainages, mountainsides or other large areas, for whatever use we, the landowners, wished to make of those areas. Those uses included our personal hunting, fishing, mushroom gathering, camping, watching wildlife and all the rest, plus management for our benefit of water, soil, wildlife, range, timber and other resources, which management we delegated to our hired managers, the U. S. Forest Service. Most of the full standard permanent roads being lost now were never temporary roads, “logging spurs” or roads purposed for only the immediate timber sale. We spent considerable extra money making these roads permanent, safe and easily maintained, so they could serve our needs in that area of forest forever.
Third, responsible management of these road infrastructure improvements requires, by any standard of management, that they be maintained so as to remain useable. As in most public infrastructure, maintenance costs only a small fraction of construction cost, and especially for public facilities currently being used, and known to be needed through the future, and is deemed justified. But roads several miles long, having cost a million dollars or more to build, are allowed to be come undrivable because of a washed out culvert that would cost only $10,000 to repair; repair of this million dollar permanent road providing access to a national forest area would cost only one one-hundredth of the road’s construction cost. We gave the Forest Service millions of dollars to build safe, easily-maintained permanent roads so we could access the national forest forever. Proper management for our benefit cannot be allowing the roads to become damaged so that we, who own them and whose money paid for their construction for our use and benefit, cannot use them. If they become unusable, we landowners are unable to visit the large served areas of the forests, and our managers become unable to manage them; our access is impossible. We lose use of our forests.
Fourth, yes, the Forest Service has not been given sufficient funds to maintain them, but they have never asked for sufficient funds, nor explained to the grantors of funds the huge losses of expensive infrastructure, the resulting denial of forest access to Americans to millions of acres of forest.
The budget is proposed “by the President,” but obviously he knows nothing about forest road maintenance. It is really proposed by his budget staff who also know nothing about forest road maintenance, based on advice given by the Secretary of Agriculture who knows nothing about forest road maintenance, based on advice he is given by the Chief of the Forest Service who also knows nothing about forest road maintenance. The Chief is in turn advised by his DC budget staff who also know nothing about forest road maintenance. They are advised by the individual regional offices’ budget staffs who also know nothing about forest road maintenance, and they are in turn advised by the individual National Forest Supervisors who know little about forest road maintenance. The Forest Supervisors finally are advised by the District Rangers and their staffs who finally should know about forest road maintenance.
Indeed the Congressional politicians may cut the recommendations “of the President.” It is true we really can’t complain about that if it happens for justifiable reasons: we elected the politicians, and almost all of us want government spending reduced. But civil servants all the way up the line must- and usually do- and usually with positive results- cry very loudly when their funds are so inadequate as to cause serious damage.
I have written to our Congresswoman Jaime Herrera-Beutler many times asking her to increase Forest Service road maintenance funding.
Admittedly, there are complicating issues, i.e.: a) There are no employees left in the Forest Service who understand the quality engineering and high cost that went into the roads; we’re all retired or dead. The records of the road planning and construction have long ago been sent to distant archives. The roads now look almost natural, as though they required little modification of the natural environment- we intended them to look this way- we planted native grasses to help them look natural. Without a blink current forest managers will abandon a road, the only road providing access to a large forest area, many miles long with a concrete bridge or two, that cost over two million dollars in today’s money. When our congresswoman asks them about the roads, they really don’t understand the issue enough to know how to answer. b) Wet areas like western Washington and Oregon get very much more water damage, require very much more repair, than roads in dry country, so maintenance costs averaged per mile applied over all roads result in much less adequate funds in our wet area. c) Many high level Forest Service officers bring experience from areas where roads were much less expensively built and require very much less maintenance. d) A different but just as painful aspect of denying public access: The Forest Service land management capability is so understaffed that they cannot adequately manage the extensive lands under their control, so closing access reduces both public activity and their farthest work distances, toward a smaller and lower-activity management area that their limited capability can perhaps more adequately handle. I understand this as another aspect of the Forest Service being underfunded that they should also cry loudly about, but recognize it as the continuation of the very wrong undeserved but well-entrenched anti-Forest Service attitude generated intentionally by preservationists back in the Spotted Owl years.
The primary fault of the Forest Service is to have not asked for adequate funds, or complained to the fund grantors the damage and loss of access caused by inadequate road maintenance.
I put the primary blame way down on the local district rangers and their staffs. They just don’t ask for enough money and don’t complain about how inadequate maintenance is damaging their roads and reducing access to their forests.
There are probably a hundred instances on just the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, where a road, say five miles long, logically located to provide needed access to a forest area, fully engineered to be permanent, safe and easily maintained, and constructed at cost of over a million dollars in today’s dollars (of money deducted from dollars that otherwise were headed directly into the federal treasury), is made unusable by a culvert washout whose repair would cost less than ten thousand dollars. The repair cost is literally exactly a penny to save a dollar. The district doesn’t have the ten thousand dollars to repair the road so the million dollar road is closed, and needed access by both the public and the Forest Service managers to that forest area is lost. This is nonsense.
If we build a million dollar building and some ten thousand dollar damage occurs, say to its water system, no one would suggest abandoning the building- we provide the ten thousand dollars to make the repair, saving the million-dollar building. Yet being unwilling to spend a penny to save a dollar is exactly what the Forest Service DC office is doing by its very inadequate road maintenance funding.
We all agree that we want to reduce deficits and taxes, but saving a penny that costs us a dollar is nonsense.
Hi David,
Along with this article, I read your latest comments in the Highway Shopper regarding the closing of campgrounds. As you so correctly surmised, the upper management of the Forest Service is dictating what goes into budget requests. Their mandate is to try to reduce the new, huge deficit by reducing budgets. Certainly it’s clear to the local staff that if they want to keep their job they will reflect this mind-set in their proposals. The idea that tree-huggers have so infiltrated the Forest Service and/or the federal government that their influence is still being felt runs counter to the current political reality. Just look at who the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture are and read what they think. The loss of Forest Service employees is a combination of lower funding overall and a sense of frustration that they cannot fulfill their mandate to manage the Forest for all users.
I would suggest that the real culprit is the drive to reduce personal and corporate income taxes. Simple math explains how reducing revenue income results in reduced spending. I appreciate the need to hold on to what little we can get, but there is a disconnect between what we want and what the results are if we get it. We’ve seen this with previous governments, where the promise of reducing income tax neglects acknowledgement of the obvious consequences. If a person supports arbitrary reduction in taxes, then complains about poor public service (road maintenance, public lands management, increasing fees for access, school support, fire departments, etc.) then the dots leading from cause to effect are not being connected.
There are probably a hundred instances on just the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, where a road, say five miles long, logically located to provide needed access to a forest area, fully engineered to be permanent, safe and easily maintained, and constructed at cost of over a million dollars in today’s dollars (of money deducted from dollars that otherwise were headed directly into the federal treasury), is made unusable by a culvert washout whose repair would cost less than ten thousand dollars. The repair cost is literally exactly a penny to save a dollar. The district doesn’t have the ten thousand dollars to repair the road so the million dollar road is closed, and needed access by both the public and the Forest Service managers to that forest area is lost. This is nonsense. If we build a million dollar building and some ten thousand dollar damage occurs, say to its water system, no one would suggest abandoning the building- we provide the ten thousand dollars to make the repair, saving the million-dollar building. Yet being unwilling to spend a penny to save a dollar is exactly what the Forest Service DC office is doing by its very inadequate road maintenance funding. We all agree that we want to reduce deficits and taxes, but saving a penny that costs us a dollar is nonsense.