Judge Offers Mixed Signals on Forest Road-Building

A federal judge said Tuesday that the Bush administration had the right to overturn a ban on road construction in untouched parts of national forests but questioned whether it could do so without weighing the possible environmental effects.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte said the Forest Service appeared to be “on solid ground” last year when it reversed a Clinton administration rule banning new roads in nearly a third of federal forests.

But she questioned whether the agency violated federal law by skipping environmental studies -- the heart of two lawsuits brought by 20 environmental groups and the states of California, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington. The cases have since been consolidated, and all parties presented arguments Tuesday in Laporte’s courtroom.

Laporte said she did not know when she would make a final decision in the case.

“The court’s role is not to endorse one approach over the other,” Laporte said, referring to Forest Service management plans.

Rather, she said, the question is whether federal procedures were violated when Bush overturned the ban on road-building that President Clinton ordered in January 2001, eight days before he left office.

If so, that could prompt Laporte to invalidate a new state-by-state management strategy endorsed by the Bush administration and restore the road-building ban.

The legal dispute stems from the so-called roadless rule that prohibited logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres of roadless forestland in 38 states and Puerto Rico. Of that, 97% is in 12 states.