Copyright 2000 The Denver Post Corporation
The
Denver Post
May 23, 2000 Tuesday 2D EDITION
SECTION: DENVER & THE WEST; Pg. B-06
LENGTH: 399 words
HEADLINE:
EDITORIAL At a dead-end on roads
BODY:
The
Clinton's administration's plan for our national
forests' roadless areas is itself a dead-end.
Some 380,000 miles of roads crisscross our national
forests, but many weren't properly built or haven't been
adequately maintained. Today, there's an $ 8 billion maintenance
backlog on U.S. Forest Service roads nationwide.
It thus
seems silly that the Forest Service would build any new roads on the
43 million acres of national woodlands - including 4.3 million acres
in Colorado - that currently don't have them. But the agency had been
doing so, mostly to accommodate new logging operations, without a
clear national policy to address the issue. The draft plan the
Clinton team recently released first seems to ban new road building
in all roadless areas. But the proposal creates so many exceptions,
even fudging the definition of what a roadless area is, it may
accomplish nothing.
The plan does not call for closing any existing
roads on any national forests, although some of the worst
environmental impacts - and alarming public safety hazards - are
being caused by existing, improperly constructed roads. Nor does the
proposal help the forest service pay for maintaining the thousands of
roads that should stay open.
Ultimately, the proposal
satisfies no one. Small timber companies, which cause the fewest
environmental headaches, understandably worry the plan will shut them
down.
But because the document doesn't ban logging in
roadless areas, environmentalists legitimately complain that many
sensitive zones areas won't be adequately protected, since they'll
be subjected to noisy intrusions from helicopters, huge cranes
and other mechanical devices.
The gaps and uncertainties
reveal how rushed and top-down the roadless initiative has been. The
Clinton administration never took the time to integrate its roadless
area policy with other, more detailed plans for managing the forests.
Nor did it invest the political capital necessary to address the
long-term urgencies confronting the Forest Service, including a
looming financial crisis.
Citizens still have an opportunity to comment
on the plan. But all the well-informed public comment in the world
still might not turn this half-baked political loaf into a
meaningful, thoughtful land management program.
LOAD-DATE: May 23, 2000 
