Copyright 2000 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta
Journal and Constitution
March 3, 2000, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: Local News; Pg. 13D
LENGTH: 425 words
HEADLINE:
Road building in forests to slow amid budget considerations
BYLINE: John Harmon, Staff
SOURCE: JOURNAL
BODY:
In a
victory for preservationists, the U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday a
policy that will make it difficult to build roads in roadless
areas of America's 155 national forests.
The agency will focus
instead on maintaining, reconstructing or decommissioning the 380,000 existing
miles of road.
During a teleconference from Salt Lake City, Forest
Service Chief Mike Dombeck said the agency has a backlog of $ 8 billion in road
maintenance and can ill afford to commit to new roads in undeveloped areas. "We
only get the funding to maintain 20 percent of the system," Dombeck said. "In
essence, we've got a road system that is crumbling, causing soil to bleed into
streams and interfering with aquatic life."
Last year, President Clinton
ordered the Forest Service to do an environmental impact study of 33 million
acres of roadless areas, tracts pristine enough to be considered for inclusion
in the national wilderness system but that are unprotected. There are about
63,000 acres of roadless areas in about 20 tracts in the Chattahoochee National
Forest of North Georgia.
Due to be published in the Federal Register
today, the new policy requires the agency to work with local authorities in
deciding which roads to close and which to maintain. The policy has a 60-day
comment period and is expected to go into effect Sept. 1.
Some roads,
Dombeck said, may become hiking trails, bike trails or hunter trails.
"It's unlikely you'll see many roads being built in roadless areas,"
said Jim Loesel of the Roanoke, Va.-based Citizens Task Force on National Forest
Management. "In fact, you're not going to see many roads being built anywhere in
the forests. And we in the conservation community think that's a good idea. "
The environmental impact study is proceeding, but the new roads policy makes it
unlikely those areas will be disturbed by many roads, which will make it
difficult to log, mine or otherwise develop those areas.
The new roads
will have to meet a strict scientific analysis and there must be "a compelling
need" for the road, Dombeck said. Plus, all new roads must be approved by the
regional forester.
"This is not about wilderness. This is about how we
protect the values of the last unfragmented lands," Dombeck said. "Should we be
building roads in these last large unfragmented tracts in America?"
At
one point in the conference he pointed out the rapid growth of metro Atlanta and
how it is devouring thousands of acres of forests and farms, making it even more
important to protect roadless areas.
LOAD-DATE: March
4, 2000 
