In an April 4 letter to the U.S. Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency expressed concerns that a draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding the Idaho Roadless Area Conservation Project fails to give sufficient information to fully assess environmental impacts.
Idaho leads the contiguous United States with 9.3 million acres of roadless area. In November 2006, it was the first state to petition the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee (RACNAC) under the Bush administration’s plan to relax roadless restrictions imposed during the Clinton administration. Environmental groups contend that Idaho’s proposed roadless plan would include 8,000 acres in addition to 10,000 acres already leased for phosphate mining in the state’s roadless areas.
In the EPA letter to Brad Gilbert (USFS team leader for Idaho Roadless Area Conservation), Susan Bromm said EPA was assigning an EC-2 rating to the Draft EIS because of insufficient information pertaining to the potential for adverse environmental impacts to water quality and aquatic resources, plus the need for measures to reduce these impacts.
“Of particular concern would be potential contamination such as selenium and radioactive wastes from phosphate mining and processing,” wrote Bromm, acting director of the EPA’s Office of Federal Activities.
Agrium, the J.R. Simplot Co., and Monsanto operate phosphate mines on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Eastern Idaho. A “Wild at Heart” report recently issued by environmental organizations contends the Bush administration proposes to open 251,800 acres of roadless areas in the forest to new development and associated road construction. It also would allow 12,100 acres of new phosphate mines and related road work, resulting in up to 545 million tons of phosphate extracted and transported, the report states.
In her letter to Gilbert, Bromm said the Forest Service’s final EIS should address three areas of concern:
- The impacts to surface water, ground water, and their beneficial uses from the potential adverse impacts of roads and phosphate mining.
- The lack of specific direction regarding the duration and closure of temporary roads and the potential to exacerbate already significant environmental impacts from a long-standing road maintenance backlog.
- The definition of “significant risk,” which is adopted from the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA), and its specific goals, which concentrate on the reduction of fire risk, and whether this definition should be modified for the multiple goals under the rule’s five themes.
“It is accepted that roads often reduce watershed health through habitat loss and degradation, and water quantity, through flow modification and alteration of existing hydrology, and the addition of nutrients, sediment, pathogens and invasive species. Further, there is a documented correlation between roadless areas and high integrity watersheds,” the EPA official wrote.
In recent years the Forest Service has decommissioned more miles of road than have been constructed, but there remains an $8 billion backlog of deferred maintenance on more than 386,000 miles of Forest Service roads nationally. At the same time, the Forest Service is getting less than 20 percent of the estimated funding needed to maintain its existing road infrastructure. For these reasons and the ecological significance of Idaho’s roadless areas, EPA recommends that the final EIS provide clear direction on temporary roads and specific guidelines on when and to what extent such roads should be “obliterated” consistent with the National Forest Management Act. “The proposed rule should fully consider the risks to ecosystems from the construction of new roads,” Bromm said, adding the terms “significant risk” and “ecosystem components” also should be included in the final EIS.
On April 25 RACNAC ratified a plan to reclassify 200,000 acres – including Bear Creek and Toponce Creek in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest – in Idaho’s roadless plan, protecting them from mining and roads. The move reclassifies the 200,000 acres from “general forest” to “backcountry/restoration” management. An exception to allow phosphate mining in backcountry management areas was eliminated in RACNAC’s recommendation.
Between 12,000 to 15,000 acres of known phosphate areas were reclassified into a general forest designation, allowing for mining and road work. RACNAC will draft a comment letter regarding the Forest Service’s plan within a month. The USFS is scheduled to present its final EIS and roadless management plan to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer by September.