Little Joe Road project back on the table again

Improvement on the North Fork of the Little Joe Road is one step closer to construction. Little Joe Road is located six miles west of St. Regis. Last Thursday Mineral County commissioners approved a federal land access proposal application to be submitted to the federal highways administration.

Nate Kegel, a Forest Service engineer with the Superior Ranger District, presented the proposal to the commissioners for their approval.

“This is just the first step in a long process,” said Kegel, “we’re only in the planning phase and we are still a lot of steps away from the project actually happening.”

Kegel said they will need to develop a plan for a road project that would improve water quality for aquatic habitat including bull trout which is currently on the endangered species list. Part of the project would be to improve drainage and resurfacing to keep excessive sediment out of the streams.

The 89-mile road extends from Montana to St. Maries, Idaho and is paved on the Idaho side, while gravel on the Montana side. The project would be to pave the remaining 17 miles to the Idaho border. The paving project initially started around ten years ago but was halted just before construction was to begin due to the impact it would have on fish and wildlife.

According to a 2009 road committee meeting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there was a meeting on site with several resources, land management, and transportation agency representatives, and “it was clear to many of them that the project would impact fish and wildlife and that an environmental assessment should have been done and that there should have been a Section 7 consultation.”

The report went on to say that the event “brought to light the need for much better and earlier coordination between Western Federal Lands Highway Division and the resource agencies in Montana”.

“We are including Fish, Wildlife, and Parks and other agencies, earlier in the process this time,” said Kegel, “and we are making sure that we mitigate any adverse affect on habitat and wildlife in the process.”

Forest Service public affairs agent, Boyd Hartwig said that there is strong support within the agency to develop a plan for improvements on the Little Joe Road that is supported by Mineral County, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

He also echoed Kegel in his statement and said that, “the Lolo National Forest is in the beginning stages of a large landscape scale planning effort that includes making significant efforts to improve bull trout habitat in the Little Joe drainage.”