Saga on Forest Road Permitting Continues

By Jeff Stringer




A forest road in Kentucky.
Photo courtesy Kentucky Department of Natural Resources.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case involving logging roads that challenged their exemption from storm water permitting. Up to this time the EPA has a rule that exempts silvicultural activities (including logging) from having to have a storm water permit. Several years ago an environmental group in the Pacific Northwest took Oregon’s state forestry agency and forest industry to court alleging that logging roads should be viewed as an industrial activity and not allowed to be part of the silvicultural exemption. While the Ninth Circuit Court that originally heard the case did NOT agree the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the initial ruling and sided with the environmental group. The courts findings indicated that logging roads should be classified as an industrial activity and as such the EPA would have to require storm water permits for logging roads. If upheld by the Supreme Court logging operations in the Pacific Northwest would have to deal with permitting. Further, environmental organizations in all other regions of the U.S. would follow suit and litigate logging road exemptions. To-date EPA has indicated that they have not wanted to require logging, including the building of logging roads, to obtain permits. The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case on December 3, 2012 and will rule within the next several months. However, the EPA threw a wrench in the cog when one business day before they issued a new ruling regarding this case. Everyone believes that the new ruling did not change anything significantly, i.e. the EPA still does not believe that logging roads are an industrial activity. However, the fact that EPA came out with a new ruling did not give anyone time, including the Justices, to review it before the hearing. Due to this anomaly it may be a possibility that the Court throws this issue back the Ninth Circuit. Christopher Reeves, Extension Forestry Associate with the Department of Forestry at the University of Kentucky, was at the Supreme Court for the hearing as well as present for debriefing with forestry policy makers. Most of these influential individuals indicated that regardless of the outcome there is a very good possibility that there will be continued litigation around this issue. For more background on this check out previous blog posts on the subject.



Christopher Reeves, Extension Forestry Associate with the Department of Forestry
at the University of Kentucky, was at the Supreme Court for the hearing.