The National Forest received $11 million in Recovery Act Funds to put toward several projects
MACKINAC CO., MI -- The US Forest Service says it's the Recovery and Reinvestment Act at work.
More than $11 million has been given to the Hiawatha National Forest for several projects.
The big thing that comes with this money is the creation of jobs.
One of the projects they'll be working on is a million dollar road reconstruction in Mackinac County.
The Upper Peninsula is one of the areas hardest hit by unemployment, so this is putting people back to work.
"The main focus for us was to enhance and create jobs, you know, the reason for doing the Recovery Act," said Hiawatha National Forest’s Bill Bowman.
A million dollars in stimulus funds were used to fix a stretch of Mackinac Trail and with it, construction crews were put to work. In all five different sub-contractors won bids. They resurfaced a four mile stretch of some of the roughest road in the county.
"Not so much concerned about our image, I was just grateful we had the opportunity to get the money into our area, you know, as everybody knows, the state's been in economic dire straights for the past couple years," said Bowman.
In all the Forest Service was given $11.1 million of Recovery Act funds for not only road maintenance, but for restoring the watershed and the ecosystem, forest fire prevention, and to improve facilities and trails. About 6 million was handed out to counties like Mackinac to use as they wanted.
"We were able to do both projects this year. The Mackinac Trail and the Borgstrom Road projects,” said Mackinac County Road Commission Manager/Engineer Dirk Heckman.
"We were able to fix two county roads at the same time with the good relationship we got with the Forest, I'm really happy," said road commissioner Frank Luepnitz.
“It was a win-win,” said Bowman.
Hiawatha National Forest has also been able to work on projects they had put on hold because they couldn't pay for them.
They say that saves them money in the long run, because the longer a project sits the more it costs to fix later.
