Behind the Beauty, Shenandoah Crumbles : Nature: Scenic area suffers from pollution and lack of upkeep. Funding woes affect maintenance at all 48 national parks.

About 2 million people a year come to Shenandoah National Park, camping and taking in stunning views like the one from Skyline Drive winding along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

What they don’t see from there are the rotting floorboards and leaky roofs of park buildings, and the dangerous dead trees that threaten to shut down whole sections of the park.

Park employees live in trailers that were already secondhand when the park bought them in 1970. Now the trailers’ leaky roofs and rickety wiring have become a sort of grim joke among the staff. Last summer an employee was showering when the bathtub plunged through the rotted floor.

“Morale is getting lower for the seasonal employees who have been here for a number of years,” ranger Sandy Rives said, adding that the park has spent more than $20,000 a year on the trailers’ upkeep.

“We’re just pouring money down the drain,” he said.

Once a showcase for Virginia’s natural beauty, Shenandoah was cited by federal auditors recently as an example of how America’s national parks are declining at an alarming rate because too little money is being spent on maintenance. The General Accounting Office report said the Park Service faces a backlog of $4 billion in repairs for the national parks with no indication that Congress will provide such money.

The money woes are hitting park visitors in their pup tents: The Shenandoah camping season has been shortened, and one campground has been closed. There are also fewer guided walks and nature shows, said Supt. Bill Wade.

Much of the damage is wreaked on the flora and fauna. Air pollution at Shenandoah, 65 miles southwest of Washington, is among the worst of all the national parks.

Smog from factories and coal-burning plants has cut visibility from the mountaintops in half. On clear days 40 years ago, park visitors could make out the tip of the Washington monument.

Gypsy moths are defoliating and killing oaks weakened by the air pollution. Beetles are killing pines. And an aphid is sucking the life out of the hemlocks.

When the season changes, huge patches of brown will scar the normally green hillsides.

Maintenance crews are unable to keep up with the job of cutting down the thousands of dead trees and limbs.

In 1991, a U.S. Geological Survey study found that Shenandoah park had the most acidic rain in the nation, with about 10 times the acidity of natural precipitation. In some spots, the park has lost species of insects and fish because of the high acidity of streams.

Rives points out the peeling paint and the leaky roof of a projection room at a mountaintop amphitheater. Rain and melting snow have begun to rot the walls and support beams of the park’s waste-water treatment plant. Plastic bags are taped over filing cabinets to save records from water damage.

“I wasn’t sure I should be doing this,” Rives said, referring to his unusual tour of a park going to seed financially. “But it doesn’t seem to affect visitation when we talk about the widespread problems here. [Visitors] just keep coming, and things here just keep getting worse.”