For more than 25 years, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has helped protect nearly 60 million acres of federal forest lands from logging and new road construction. Last year, the Trump administration announced it would end “the roadless rule,” which it claims would allow for “more flexibility” to reduce wildfire risk and for “responsible timber production.” Senate Republicans attached an amendment to the Wildfire Prevention Act last month to repeal the roadless rule that passed out of committee on party lines.
But building new roads to boost timber logging in national forest lands could imperil the quality of drinking water for at least 25 million residents across the U.S., according to a new University of Washington study. That includes residents of Portland, Hood River and other communities who get their drinking water from watersheds in the Mt. Hood National Forest.
The study also found other potential harms from rescinding the roadless rule, including to biodiversity and habitats for species like salmon that spawn in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and other national forests in the Pacific Northwest. Hunting, fishing and other recreation activities could also be at risk from development of wilderness areas currently protected by the roadless rule.
Michael Dombeck is a co-author of the study and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. As chief of the U.S. Forest Service from 1997 to 2001, Dombeck helped create the roadless rule and implement it under President Bill Clinton. He joins us for more details.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Jenn Chávez. We turn now to water – that’s the focus of a new study from the University of Washington related to the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, also known as “the roadless rule.” For 25 years, it has prohibited new road construction and intensive logging on nearly 60 million acres of federal forest land, including 2 million each in Oregon and Washington. Now, as the federal government works to repeal the rule, researchers are calling attention to how that might affect drinking water sources on that land.
To learn more, we’re joined now by a co-author of the study, Michael Dombeck. He’s a Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He also helped develop and implement the roadless rule as chief of the U.S. Forest Service from 1997 to 2001 during the Clinton presidency. Michael Dombeck, thank you and welcome to the show.
Michael Dombeck: Thank you for having me.
Chávez: Before we dive into this study about drinking water, I’d like to learn a little bit more about the roadless rule in general. As I just said, you helped implement the rule in your role with the U.S. Forest Service. Why was the rule created in the first place?
Dombeck: Jenn, there are really two major areas. Number one is the economics of it and number two is the environmental values, which the study on water addresses. But just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the rule, we have 193 million acres in the National Forest system in the United States. After World War II, timber harvest ramped up significantly for obvious reasons, we needed wood for the war effort. Then, of course, the post-war housing boom put an additional demand on the wood. By the late 1980s, we had 380,000 miles of roads on the National Forest system. That’s enough mileage to go to the moon and halfway back.
Another metric to compare it by is that there’s about 46,000 miles in the interstate system. It costs money to build roads and it costs money to maintain roads. Once the large, high-value timber was gone, that literally left the Forest Service holding the bag of about an $8.6 billion backlog in road maintenance, which is little more than a taxpayer liability. Plus the controversy associated with going into roadless areas was intense.
So I was left holding the bag when I became chief of the Forest Service and asked myself, what would a private woodland owner do? What would a corporate timber company executive would do? Well, obviously you need to slow the system down. So we really put a moratorium on road building initially and we saw the public support behind that. At that point, the administration and President Clinton asked us what we could do to make this permanent. So that really led to protecting 58 million acres of land from building new roads for commercial logging, and that rule has been in place since 2001.
Chávez: There was a lengthy process and a period of time in which this rule was being developed. During that time, what was the general reaction or sentiment towards the rule that you all got from the public?
Dombeck: Well, when we first put the proposals out there, we held over 600 public meetings. Really, the process was an 18-month long process that generated an all-time record of 1.6 (or so) million comments from the American public, with 90% of those comments supporting protection of roadless areas. They, in fact, called for more restrictive measures than the proposal originally called for.
Chávez: Now, as the Trump administration seeks to rescind the roadless rule, one of their main arguments for doing so is that it’d make it easier to fight fires. We just spent a couple of minutes hearing about fires in the Northwest. One part of that argument is that more roads would make fires easier to access; and two, that an increase in logging would allow for better forest management, including thinning out potential fuel for fires. What do you make of those arguments when you hear that reasoning?
Dombeck: The first point, on the level of fuels available, fire requires fuel, oxygen and heat. Of course, it’s largely driven by weather, as the earlier guest had just described with the dry lightning strikes. But we do need vegetation management. That’s very important in reducing fuels where we can because we’re really dealing with nearly 100 years of fire suppression, which we today all agree was not the right policy. So we had fuel buildups, more fuel, drier conditions, the influence of climate change … so we’re having more intense fires. In fact, the fires today are a magnitude worse, in many cases, than they were when I was chief, and I retired in 2001. So vegetation management is important, and we really should be talking about vegetation management to reduce fuels and do work in these areas.
The second thing I would address is that overall, the data for the last 25 years or so shows that most fire ignitions occur within a quarter of a mile of a road. In fact, if we look at the rate of fire ignitions per 1,000 hectares, in wilderness areas, we see the ignition rate of about 1.7 fires per 1,000 hectares. In roadless areas, it’s about 1.9 [fires]. And in areas near roads, it’s 7.4 fires. So the bulk of the fires are really human ignitions, human-caused, within roadless areas. So, while fighting fire in very remote areas is a real challenge, the highest probability of fire is where we have interactions of humans and roads.
Chávez: This study you’ve co-authored focuses on how the roadless rule protects watersheds that produce drinking water for millions of Americans. It took a nationwide look and found, for example, that a lot of people get drinking water from watersheds in these areas in states like California and Colorado. Could you tell us what this looks like in Oregon and Washington? Do you know how many people get drinking water sourced from these areas in our region in the Northwest?
Dombeck: First and foremost, I’d like to acknowledge the University of Washington, the leadership they provided, the Conservation Science Partners and the leadership that they provided, and the co-authors who really dug in very deeply using the most state-of-the-art science to look at this. What we looked at was almost 2,500 watersheds across the United States and some 80,000 stream miles, and how that influenced the drinking water supply.
What we found was that over 25 million Americans’ drinking water, using public water systems, gets cleaner water basically because of what mother nature does in water filtration. The percolation of water into aquifers, replenishing the groundwater table and downflow water from filtration, are all things that mother nature does for us. If we take a look at Oregon specifically, we see that 91% of the roadless areas in Oregon, about 1.6 million acres, are in municipal watersheds. They provide water for about 900,000 people in the state of Oregon. Cities like Salem, Baker City, Lake Oswego, Pendleton, Ashland, Eugene, Bend and many others get their water purified and much of it sourced from these roadless areas … and about the same proportion in Washington. So we get clean, clear water and we don’t have to spend money on water filtration plants. What we need to do is to allow Mother Nature to do the work for us.
Chávez: You have spoken to how Mother Nature has contributed to the health of these watersheds. I’m wondering, if the roadless rule is to be rescinded, and road construction and logging began in currently protected areas, what kind of effect could it have on watersheds?
Dombeck: What we see, especially in steep backcountry rugged terrain, is sedimentation increase, landslides, sedimentation into streams, reduced water quality, because of the unstable soils in many cases. Remember, this is is steep, mountainous country that we’re talking about. So when we get storm events we get oftentimes intense soil erosion and degradation of habitat.
For example, some of the national forests in Oregon have some of the last remaining populations of bull trout. Reproductive habitat, the spawning habitat of many salmon species is dependent upon good stream conditions [and] clean water. Many of the headwater streams that feed the major rivers are relying on roadless areas because these are undisturbed areas that provide a clean, steady source of water. The thing to keep in mind is what these areas do is they catch, store and release water over time. That’s so important in dampening the effects of floods and increasing flow during drought periods.
Chávez: Thank you for getting into those species of animals as well. You read my mind with the next question I had for you. This study also focuses on aquatic biodiversity so it’s great that you have highlighted that too. I just want to ask you, as someone who helped create the roadless rule 25 years ago, I wonder what has it been like for you personally to watch things unfold in the recent months, where the current administration is seeking to roll it back?
Dombeck: It’s a bit puzzling because it’s hard to identify a constituency that supports the rollback of the rule, given the level of support that I mentioned earlier for the rule. In fact, the opposition to repealing the rule was something like 80% in the last go around here, just within the last year when the administration first put the proposal out. But in a sense it’s a problem looking for a solution.
Given the rate of development of land in the U.S. I believe it’s so important to maintain the last backcountry wild places that we have. We’re dealing with something like the development of 6,000 to 8,000 acres per day in the U.S. That’s wildland, forest land, farmland, wetland being subdivided into more intensive uses. So it’s important to keep things the way they are.
In my view, it’s a very conservative policy. Number one, it doesn’t cost the taxpayer money by building roads. Number two, it doesn’t create a long-term liability and cost to maintain the roads once they’re built. And number three, it keeps options open for the future, and it provides some of the best hunting and fishing opportunities in the country [in] these wild backcountry places that belong to all Americans.
Chávez: Michael Dombeck, I know we will continue covering this at OPB, particularly through the work of our wonderful climate and environment team here. I just want to thank you very much for joining us today to unpack all of this and share about the new study. Thank you.
Dombeck: Thank you.
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