Appeals court directs EPA to regulate mud washing off logging roads

Appeals court: Mud from logging roads is pollution

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A federal appeals court has decided that mud which washes off logging roads is pollution and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to write regulations to reduce the amount that reaches salmon streams.

A conservation group that filed the lawsuit says if the ruling Tuesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stands, logging roads on federal, state and private lands across the West will eventually have to be upgraded.

The Northwest Environmental Defense Center in Portland sued the Oregon Department of Forestry over sediment washing off two logging roads on the Tillamook State Forest in northwestern Oregon.