BMPs.xps

BMP 2.4 - Road Maintenance and Operations

Objective: To ensure water-quality protection by providing adequate and appropriate maintenance and by controlling road use and operations.

Explanation: Appropriate maintenance and control of road use and operations can protect water quality, aquatic and riparian resources, and capital investments. Maintenance needs and operational controls are informed by periodic inventory and assessment that determine road condition and the potential impacts the road has on water quality.

Properly designed and maintained road surfaces and drainage systems can reduce adverse effects to water resources by facilitating natural hydrologic function. Roads and drainage systems normally deteriorate because of traffic, weather, and effects of maintenance. In addition, roads occasionally become saturated by new groundwater springs and seeps after a wildfire or unusually wet periods. Many such conditions can be corrected by timely maintenance. However, while routine maintenance may be needed to ensure the road performs as designed, it can also be a source of soil disturbance and therefore, sediment production. In particular, the grading of inside ditches and road surfaces can significantly increase sediment production rates. Less aggressive maintenance may be desired to minimize disturbance of stable sites.

Road management objectives include the level and type of maintenance that a road is expected to receive. Assigned road maintenance levels vary from 1 to 5, and are directly linked to the operational objectives for the road. Maintenance Level 1 is assigned to roads closed to all motorized vehicles for a year or more; they should be left in a stable condition, and by definition, require less maintenance. Maintenance Levels 4 and 5 are assigned to roads that are typically double-lane, aggregate-surfaced or paved, and passenger vehicle traffic is “encouraged.” They are well maintained to provide a moderate to high degree of user comfort and convenience.

Operational objectives and activities are also defined by the road management objectives, and depend upon the amount of maintenance a road is expected to receive. Road operations also include permit, contract, and agreement administration, control of seasonal use, sustaining roads in closed status and revising maintenance levels and seasonal closures, as needed. Road closures and restrictions are necessary because many forest roads are designed for dry-season use. Most local roads are not surfaced, while others have some surfacing or spot stabilization. Roads without stabilized surfaces or adequate base can be damaged by use during wet periods or by loads heavier than the road was designed to convey.

Road maintenance plans are implemented through contract, cooperators, force account, and active timber sale or other authorized activities. Contract, timber sale, and other authorized or permitted operations are bound by specifications and drawings. BMPs are incorporated as specifications, contract or sale clauses, operating plan requirements, permit clauses, and are often shown in the drawings. The contracting officer’s representative is responsible for assuring compliance by contractors; engineering representative, TSA, or FSR assures compliance by cooperator, purchaser or permitted operator. Project manager and crew supervisor assures compliance for force account work. Optimally, the forest hydrologist works with the forest quality assurance personnel to determine if approved maintenance tasks are completed with minimal resource impacts. Adjustments to future maintenance plans and methods are considered when previous methods do not provide the needed protection to water quality.

Risk from road maintenance activities can be managed by using the appropriate techniques from the following list adapted as needed to local site conditions.

Implementation

Inspection:

1. Periodically inspect system travel routes to assess condition and linkage to water quality. This information assists in setting maintenance and improvement priorities.

a. Provide training to the engineering personnel performing condition surveys to successfully identify and assess linkage to water quality.

b. Conduct condition surveys jointly with engineering and hydrology personnel, to more accurately assess potential of road to impact water quality.

c. Prioritize inspections to roads at high risk of failure, followed by road segments that are hydrologically connected to the stream network, to reduce risk of diversions and cascading failures.

d. Identify diversion potential on roads, and prioritize for treatment.

2. Inspect drainage structures and runoff patterns after major storm events and snowmelt, and perform any necessary maintenance. Major storm events include all storm events for which the National Weather Service issues a local flood watch, advisory, or warning.

a. Determine the extent of hydrologic connectivity during and/or just after major storm events, including the connectivity of disturbed areas directly adjacent to the road network. Use this information to prioritize and plan improvements to road drainage.

b. Immediately clean out, repair or reconstruct waterbars, inside ditches, culverts, and other features that are not functioning in order to hydrologically disconnect roads from surface waters and prevent discharges of sediment andother pollutants to water bodies.

3. Regularly inspect roads during all operations.

4. Keep roads closed to public use, but open for administrative use, in hydrologically functional condition. If waterbars are breached, forest personnel will promptly repair them.

5. Encourage field personnel of all disciplines to observe road deterioration or damage commensurate with travel to field activities, and report to engineering, for immediate action, if necessary.

a. Restrict operations if impact or imminent threat of impact to water quality is occurring.

b. Consider restricting operations if road damage such as surface displacement or active rutting is occurring.

Maintenance Planning:

1. Incorporate the forest’s Wet Weather Operations Standards and notification protocols in maintenance and operations.

2. Develop and implement an erosion control plan commensurate with the complexity and scale, and duration of the activity. See BMP 2.13.

3. Develop and implement annual maintenance plans that prioritize road maintenance work for the forest or district.

a. Include roads identified as needing maintenance from field condition surveys, and roads identified through roads analysis and travel analysis that negatively impact water quality.

b. Determine method of accomplishment (contract, force account, permit, and cooperative) and define responsibilities and maintenance timing in the plan.

4. Planning for emergency interim/temporary erosion controls to protect water quality is considered for roads that may require immediate maintenance, but are beyond capability of annual maintenance plan.

5. Identify roads with potential to improve water quality by modifying road prism and drainage patterns through maintenance operations.

a. Analyze roads in an interdisciplinary manner to identify other impacts that may occur due to changes in road prism or drainage patterns. Consider local conditions and site characteristics.

b. Implement diversion potential method per Forest Service Publication 9777.1814P- SDTDC Diversion Potential at Road-Stream Crossings.

c. Consider user safety and protection of other forest resources.

d. Provide training and reference materials for forest road managers, road maintenance operators, and road maintenance contract preparation personnel to work with hydrologists in identifying appropriate roads for revised maintenance procedures.

6. Evaluate road management objectives when an inspection indicates road design is not meeting current transportation and/or resource needs. Road management objectives support forest LRMP prescriptions.

Maintenance Activities:

1. Maintain road surfaces to dissipate intercepted water in a uniform manner along the road by outsloping with rolling dips, insloping with drains, or crowning with drains.

Where feasible and consistent with protecting public safety, utilize outsloping and rolling the grade (rolling dips) as the primary drainage technique.

2. Adjust surface drainage structures to minimize hydrologic connectivity by:

a. Discharging road runoff to areas of high infiltration and high surface roughness.

b. Armoring drainage facility outlet as energy dissipater and to prevent gully initiation.

c. Increasing the number drainage facilities with SMZs.

3. Clean ditches and drainage structure inlets only as often as needed to keep them functioning. Prevent unnecessary or excessive vegetation disturbance and removal on features such as swales, ditches, shoulders, and cut and fill slopes.

4. Minimize diversion potential by installing diversion prevention dips that can accommodate overtopping runoff.

a. Place diversion prevention dips downslope of crossing, rather than directly over the crossing fill, and in a location that minimizes fill loss in the event of overtopping.

b. Armor diversion prevention dips when the expected volume of fill loss is significant.

5. Address risk and consequence of future failure at the site when repairing road failures.

Use vegetation, rock, and other native materials to help stabilize failure zones.

6. Maintain road surface drainage by removing berms, unless specifically designated otherwise.

7. Install and preserve markers to identify and protect drainage structures that can be damaged during maintenance activities (that is, culverts, subdrains, and so forth)

8. When grading roads or cleaning drainage structure inlets and ditches, avoid undercutting the toe of the cut slope.

9. Grade road surfaces in accordance with road management objectives and assigned maintenance level. Grade only as needed to maintain a stable running surface and adequate surface drainage.

10. Accompany grading of hydrologically connected road surfaces and inside ditches with erosion and sediment control installation.

11. Identify additional road maintenance measures to protect and maintain water;

aquatic, and riparian resources including: surfacing and resurfacing, outsloping, dips and cross drains, armoring of ditches, spot rocking, replacing culverts, and installing new drainage features.

12. Effectively maintain roads in storage to eliminate all motorized vehicle use. Maintain physical closure devices, if present, to be safe and effective. For roads where physical closure methods are not feasible, install signing to inform of road closure.

13. Enforce pre-haul maintenance, maintenance during haul, and post haul maintenance (putting the road back in storage) specifications when maintenance level 1 roads are opened for use on commercial resource management projects. Require the commercial operator to leave roads in a satisfactory condition when project is completed.

14. Opened for use on commercial resource management projects. Require the commercial operator to leave roads in a satisfactory condition when project is completed.

Operations:

1. Restrict or prohibit road use during periods when such use would likely damage the roadway surface or road drainage features are identified through Travel Analysis and Travel Management, and implement through enforcement of motor vehicle use map.

Changes in road management are supported by appropriate analysis. Follow the forest’s WWOS. See BMP 2.13.

2. Require users to obtain permit(s) when proposed operations involve use of roads by vehicles larger than the design vehicle, or beyond typical operation period or season of use (that is, timber purchasers, mining operations, oversize vehicle movement, and so forth. Conditions of the permitted use may require:

a. Strengthening the road surface by adding rock, dust palliatives, pavement, or armor, particularly in areas where surfaces are vulnerable to movement such as corners and steep sections.

b. Considering short-term road surface stabilization by dust abatement methods, such as watering.

c. Upgrading drainage structures.

d. Restricting use to low-ground-pressure vehicles or frozen ground conditions.

e. Strengthening the road base if roads are tending to rut.

f. Using a base course of rock and/or geotextile fabric to provide subsurface stability.

g. Intensifying maintenance to handle the traffic without creating excessive erosion and damage to the road surface.

h. Repairing damage to road and forest resources associated with use by permittee.

i. Restoring the road to original standard of features, such as restoring waterbars.

3. To the extent possible, ensure drainage features are fully capable of preventing pollutant discharges to surface waters before the start of the local winter season (such as November 16 to March 31) or before the start of runoff-inducing precipitation events.

4. Permits to oversize or overweight loads require that damage by such loads be repaired by the permit holder. Damage includes impacts to water quality.

5. Cooperative maintenance agreements follow Forest Service direction for use, maintenance, repairs, and responsibilities.

6. Roads under easement are subject to terms of conditions for operation and maintenance.

BMP 2.11 - Equipment Refueling and Servicing

Objective: Prevent fuels, lubricants, cleaners, and other harmful materials from discharging into nearby surface waters or infiltrating through soils to contaminate groundwater resources.

Explanation: Many activities require the use and maintenance of petroleum-powered equipment in the field: vegetation harvest and regeneration; road, trail, and facility construction, reconstruction, and maintenance. The activities often employ equipment that uses or contains gasoline, diesel, oil, grease, hydraulic fluids, antifreeze, coolants, cleaning agents, and/or pesticides. These petroleum and chemical products may pose a risk to surface water and groundwater during refueling and servicing the equipment.

Sale administrators, contracting officer’s representatives, engineering representatives, inspectors, permit administrators, and force account crew supervisors are responsible for enforcing requirements of equipment fueling and servicing activities. They can manage the risk from fuel and chemical spills during equipment refueling or servicing by using the appropriate techniques from the following list adapted as needed to local site conditions.

Implementation:

1. Plan for appropriate equipment refueling and servicing sites during project planning and design.

2. Allow temporary refueling and servicing only at approved locations, which are well away from water or riparian resources.

3. Develop or use existing fuel and chemical management plans (for example, spill prevention control and countermeasures (SPCC), spill response plan, emergency response plan) when developing the management prescription for refueling and servicing sites.

4. Locate, design, construct, and maintain petroleum and chemical delivery and storage facilities consistent with local, State and Federal regulations.

5. Install contour berms and trenches around vehicle service and refueling areas, chemical storage and use areas, and waste dumps to fully contain spills.

6. Use liners as needed to prevent seepage to groundwater.

7. Provide training for all personnel handling fuels and chemicals in their proper use, handling, storage, and disposal.

8. Avoid spilling fuels, lubricants, cleaners, and other chemicals during handling and transporting.

BMP 2.11 - Equipment Refueling and Servicing

9. Prohibit excess chemicals or wastes from being stored or accumulated in the project area.

10. Remove service residues, waste oil, and other materials from NFS land and properly dispose them following completion of the project.

11. Clean up and dispose of spilled materials according to specified requirements in the appropriate guiding document.

12. Report spills and initiate appropriate clean-up action in accordance with applicable State and Federal laws, rules and regulations. The forest hazardous materials coordinator’s name and phone number shall be available to Forest Service personnel who administer or manage activities utilizing petroleum-powered equipment.

13. Remove contaminated soil and other material from NFS lands and dispose of this material in a manner according to controlling regulations.

14. Prepare a certified SPCC Plan for each facility, including mobile and portable facilities that have oil storage capacity of at least 1,320 gallons in containers 55 gallons or greater.

a. Install or construct the containment features or countermeasures called for in the SPCC Plan to ensure that spilled oil does not reach groundwater or surface water.

b. Ensure that each SPCC Plan includes a spill contingency plan at each facility that is unable to provide secondary spill containment.

c. Ensure that clean-up of spills and leaking tanks complies with Federal, State and local regulations and requirements.

15. Prepare a contingency plan when quantities of petroleum products are capable of violating Basin Plan water-quality objectives.

16. Section H clauses for Public Works Construction include a standard clause for Spill Plan when project or activity includes oil or oil products storage exceeding 1,320 gallons, or a single container exceeding 660 gallons. Section H clauses also require designation of contractor’s key personnel, including authorized on-site representative and phone number(s).