I wrote environmental analysis effects for scores of timber sales on the Umpqua National Forest. There are more than 8 designated roadless areas on that Forest that feed the North and South Umpqua Rivers. The Umpqua National Forest has as many miles of roads as streams, and segments of those roads all channel water to the rivers and habitat for aquatic life downstream.
When more water volume and velocity reaches streams than it did before those roads were built, the channels adjust by eroding their banks and filling pools. The result is simpler channels with fewer niches and pockets for insects and other invertebrates, and fewer refuges for the fish and aquatic amphibians that live on them. Caddis, mayfly, rough-skinned newt, Pacific giant salamander, chub, dace, steelhead and salmon are harmed.
I took advice writing my analyses from colleagues in the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Geological Survey, National Weather Service, Oregon and Portland State Universities, non-governmental organizations like Umpqua Watersheds and Oregon Natural Resources Coalition and others. I have 30 years experience as a hydrologist for the University of Arizona, Forest Service Forest and Range Research, U.S. Peace Corps and Shawnee and Umpqua National Forests. I have a bachelor's degree in forestry and masters degree in snow hydrology from the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The environmental effects of very timber sale I worked on depended on the sum of rainfall and runoff from roaded and roadless areas combined. The proposed elimination of the roadless rule and construction of roads in those area makes the decisions in all those activities invalid, with unplanned and unevaluated increases or changes in floods, droughts, sediment, channel scour and deposition.
Finally, road "decommissioning", or attempt to remove roads and their impacts, doesn't work. Once a road is built, the root strength of cut trees disappears, portions of the closed roads still feed directly into streams, and water diverted from road ditches makes road fills into debris flows that scour channels for miles downstream.
The elimination of the Roadless Rule will cause physical and ecological changes which guarantee poorer water quality and quantity for people and aquatic life that are already degraded. I oppose the decision to do that.