Parks Show Pinch of Tight Budgets

Vacationers heading for national parks this summer could be in for a shock: closed campgrounds and missing toilets, storm debris on beaches and trails, uncut grass and fewer nature lectures from rangers.

The National Park Service is wrestling with a budget squeeze made even more difficult by an unusually damaging series of winter storms and floods.

Federal officials and private watchdog groups say deterioration and money shortages are imperiling parks long considered national treasures. For too many years, maintenance has been postponed and park budgets have failed to keep up with inflation, they say.

“Everybody likes ribbon cutting. Nobody wants to fix the roof,” said Roger Kennedy, director of the National Park Service.

Problems are everywhere:

* At Yellowstone in Wyoming, two museums are closed. A shortage of park rangers means visitors are left largely on their own in the massive park’s northern sector.

* Beach debris and mud inundate picnic grounds and beaches at Pennsylvania’s Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area, among the most popular parks in the populous Middle Atlantic states. Workers are trying to fix the damaged toilets, and only a last-minute infusion of $43,000 prevented the firing of the park’s lifeguards.

* To save money, two of the 10 campsites at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee won’t open this summer. Only three seasonal rangers will be hired, instead of the normal 10, and 17 fewer maintenance workers.

* In California, fewer rangers are at Sequoia National Park, and the season has been shortened. At Yosemite and at many other parks and recreational areas across the country, trash won’t be picked up as often or toilets cleaned as frequently.

“We can no longer do more with less,” said Mike Finley, Yellowstone’s superintendent. Each year, he said, the park is expected to “absorb increasing costs and maintain the same levels of . . . services” for a growing number of visitors.

Similar sentiments are expressed daily by park officials and rangers from Acadia National Park in Maine and Independence Hall in Philadelphia to the Great Smokies park in the South and the popular Western parks such as Glacier, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

Mindful of the parks’ popularity, Congress exempted the National Park Service from the type of severe budget slashing inflicted on other agencies in the Interior Department and even slightly increased its operating budget to $1.08 billion. Congress also recently approved an extra $46 million to help repair storm and flood damage, work that park officials say could take months.

The budget has not kept up with inflation, however, nor has it taken into account growing interest in the parks by the nation’s vacationers. This summer, a record 270 million people are expected to visit the nation’s 360 federal parks, monuments and recreation areas.

At the same time, proposals to increase park fees have stalled in Congress over disputes about who should have to pay higher fees and how much they should be increased. Legislation that would require private concessionaires to contribute more is also in limbo.

While the severe winter and flooding have hit some parks hard, Kennedy said the bigger problems are decaying buildings and facilities and the inability to continue educational services at adequate levels.

“Visitors are going to find trails closed, they’re going to find portions of parks closed, campgrounds closed,” Kennedy said. “They’re going to see signs that say ‘Don’t drink the water’ in some places; they’re going to find there are no ranger talks. The little things that make these places park-like.”

Park superintendents have had to make tough choices. At most parks, the number of seasonal workers--both rangers and maintenance workers--has been reduced.

“All the parks are struggling,” said Elaine Sevy, National Park Service spokeswoman in Washington. She said more than 900 jobs are unfilled throughout the system because of lack of funds.

At the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, where 4.8 million people visit each year from the surrounding Pennsylvania-New Jersey-New York urban sprawl, Assistant Supt. Bob Kirby described his problems this way:

“None of our employees are getting any training. Supplies and materials are cut back to bare bones. Historically, we’ve cut the lawns every week and made the place trim and neat; today you see the grass in most places is a foot high. The picnic areas and playgrounds are . . . filled with river flotsam, sticks and mud.”

Closing a 116-site campground and two museums in the less-traveled northern reaches of Yellowstone will save the park $70,000. A two-hour tour of a remote forest area has been scrapped to free park rangers for duties elsewhere.

The $70,000 savings on the closing of the Yellowstone campground will cost Washington $115,000 in fees, normally used for parkland purchases. About 2,100 campsites remain.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most popular in the country with 8 million visitors annually. But administrators are closing two remote campgrounds, both to save money and because there are fewer park rangers to police them.