California gains many benefits from its 20 million acres of national forests, but none is more valuable than clean water.

From the Sierra to the Klamath to the San Bernardino, the 18 national forests of California are the headwaters of the Golden State. You can think of them as wooded water factories. That is why all Californians have a stake in making sure those lands are managed well - and a big stake in a bill now making its way through Congress.

In California, nearly half of the state's annual runoff comes from national forests, even though they cover only one-fifth of the land. In Northern California, the percentage is even higher.

This past summer, the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee approved a proposal by Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., for $65 million in funding for road decommissioning and maintenance in our nation's national forests. While the bill is partially about roads, it's also about providing clean water.

The Forest Service is one of the largest road-building and maintenance agencies in the federal government. It has built and maintained a road network that is longer than the federal system of interstate highways.

Over 400,000 miles of unpaved roads that wind through America's national forests provide important access for logging, family vacations, hunting and fishing, resource management and firefighting.

But roads have both a good and a bad side. When not properly maintained, forest roads become impassable and badly eroded - muddying streams that provide drinking water for 60 million people in 3,400 communities nationwide. Many of those communities are in California.

The funding in the Dicks bill would be used to restore watersheds by removing old, failing roads, and by maintaining and improving needed access roads and bridges, primarily to improve water quality and fish habitat.

The bottom line is that the better we maintain our road system, the healthier our fish, wildlife and drinking water will be.

The Forest Service estimates there are more than 20,000 miles of unstable and unnecessary roads in the California national forests and nearly 7,000 miles in Washington and Oregon. Dicks' bill would rehabilitate those roads to more natural conditions, while still allowing ample access for forest visitors.

It's a substantial investment, but well worth it. There will be multiple benefits: better habitat for fish and wildlife; cleaner water; thousands of good jobs in the rural communities that most need them.

It's high time that Congress provided the Forest Service with the funding it needs to manage and maintain its road system. Dicks' proposal is a good start and a sound investment to keep future costs down. The Forest Service has plenty of experience in road decommissioning, and with the proper funding it could finally manage its road system effectively.