March 1997
Calling the Purchaser Road Credit road building program "a subsidy to the timber industry," Congressman John Kasich (R, Ohio) has introduced an amendment to eliminate the program from the nation’s budget. The announcement of the proposed cut came in a press conference on January 28 as part of a proposal to eliminate "corporate welfare."
As so often happens with timber issues, the facts on forest roads are obscured by popular rhetoric. Permanent roads in the national forest system throughout the country are beneficial to all visitors to the forests, and increase the value of these public lands, even as all roads and highways provide benefits to the American public. In fact, the primary use of the national forest road system is recreation. On any given forest, nearly 80 percent of the roads are open to all traffic, including logging, recreation, fire protection, wildlife and fisheries management and many forms of forest and ecosystem management.
Only 3 percent of the roads in the 191 million acre national forest system are used exclusively for timber access. Approximately 20 percent of the forest road system is closed to highway vehicle use, and is available only to hikers, mountain bikers and other recreational users. Over the past five years, the Forest Service has closed more than 25,000 miles of forest roads.
When the issue is looked at from a usage standpoint, it becomes obvious that the motivation behind recent attempts to curtail the forest service road building program is to limit the general citizenry’s access to national forest lands. That is not to say that everyone, such as Rep. Kasich , who advocates eliminating purchaser credits, is opposed to public access on public lands. But the radical environmental movement does oppose access, and it is especially good at orchestrating public debate to achieve its purposes. In this instance, that crowd has advanced the idea that the road building program is a government handout to the timber industry.
Directly conflicting with the idea that the Purchaser Road Credit program is bilking the taxpayer is the fact that the program is really a bargain on a construction cost-per-mile basis. Since 1985, road construction costs under the Purchaser Road Credit program have averaged only $25,900 per mile, compared with a cost of $60,200 per mile when built by general contractors with appropriated funds. The program is, therefore, a highly efficient way for the Forest Service to obtain needed road construction and reconstruction at the lowest possible cost. In reality, the timber industry has been subsidizing the general public’s access to national forest lands, but it’s unlikely the Sierra Club is going to tell anybody that.
Alaska is the region with the highest projected utilization of the Purchaser Road Credit for new road construction in unroaded areas. In FY 1996, the Forest Service only plans for 95 miles of new roads into unroaded areas. Of that, 70 miles are in Alaska. Which brings up the point that most of the roads planned for Purchaser Road Credit construction are not new roads, but reconstruction of old roads. In FY 1997, the Forest Service plans to use the program to reconstruct 3.7 miles for every 1 mile of scheduled new roads.
As far as logging companies are concerned, the Purchaser Road Credit program is basically a wash. Logging companies don’t really come out ahead on specified road construction projects. They get credits to cover the cost of construction, they get access to the timber, but how the road is paid for -- whether through credits or hard money -- is of little concern. In many instances, it might serve loggers just as well if the roads were temporary.
These issues must be brought to the debate as the discussion develops in Washington over the Purchaser Road Credit system. But for now, it should be noted that the program is anything but a subsidy to the logging industry. On the contrary, the big losers will be the recreational users of the national forest system if Congress and the public allow the anti-logging crowd to frame the terms of the debate over national forest policy one more time.
