Money For Logging Roads May Be Cut Conservationists Optimistic Over House Vote To End Federal Subsidies

Losers on a tie vote a year ago, environmentalists are optimistic they’ll prevail in the House this week in a showdown over taxpayer spending on logging roads in national forests.

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote Thursday on amendments to a spending bill that would require timber companies to pay to build their own logging roads in the federally owned forests.

“It’s time to take a buzz saw to the timber road subsidy,” said Courtney Cuff of Friends of the Earth and director of the environmentalists’ “Green Scissors” budget-cutting campaign.

Conservationists say construction of logging roads can be more environmentally damaging than the logging itself, accelerating soil erosion into streams.

The industry says logging roads provide opportunities for recreation as well, and that roads today are built to higher standards than those that proved ecologically destructive in the past.

Last year, the House initially approved, 211-210, an amendment by Rep. Joseph Kennedy II, D-Mass., to bar $50 million in federal money for new logging roads. But the next day the amendment was reconsidered and lost on a tie vote, 211-211.

This year, President Clinton included in his budget a proposal to eliminate the $30 million in “purchaser road credits” that effectively reimburse timber companies for building the logging roads, giving them credits to use on timber sale bids.

Ohio Rep. John Kasich, Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is backing the effort, which has the support of a new alliance of environmental and taxpayer watchdog groups.

“The timber road program is a clear-cut case of corporate welfare,” said Jill Lancelot, legislative director of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Kennedy will offer an amendment along with Reps. John Porter, R-Ill., and Elizabeth Furse, D-Ore., to eliminate the credits that have helped build 380,000 miles of logging roads.

It’s an especially tough vote for Western Democrats who count both environmentalists and union members at saw mills as their friends. Logging on national forests in Oregon and Washington already has fallen to about one-fourth of 1980s levels.

“The real test will be how some of the new Northwest members are going to vote,” said Chris West, vice president of the industry’s Northwest Forestry Association in Portland.