U.S. Parks Officials Favor Maintenance Over Expansion

A program to catalog deteriorating roads and buildings in national parks is aiding federal efforts to alleviate an estimated $4.9 billion in backlogged maintenance projects, a National Park Service official told lawmakers Tuesday.

Restoring existing parks will take precedence over acquiring new parkland, said Donald Murphy, deputy director of the National Park Service, who testified before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Park service officials must slow any expansion of the park system “so it doesn’t exacerbate the problems we’re trying to resolve,” he said. “Our emphasis is on maintaining the facilities that we do have.”

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush pledged funding to help rehabilitate the aging national parks, many of which have deteriorating or neglected facilities.

The assessment program -- which includes regular checks of parks’ and facilities’ conditions, a computer program to prioritize maintenance needs and consistent methods for estimating repair costs -- will be in place throughout the system in fiscal year 2006. It will cost about $91 million to set up the program, and operating costs will be $20 million a year.

The $4.9 billion, which is being dispersed over five years, is “a moving target, a guesstimate,” by the park service, said Barry Hill, the director of natural resources and environment for the General Accounting Office, who also testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “There is really no accountability in terms of money invested to deal with this problem,” Hill said of the park service. Congress has so far distributed nearly $2.9 billion over the last two years.

The monitoring program, which subcommittee Chairman Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.) called “encouraging,” is underway; the park service has completed an inventory of assets at all 388 parks and is training staff members in how to use the program. “Our priorities are between health and safety needs, rehabilitating worn-out facilities,” Murphy said.

The park service so far has undertaken 900 repair projects, including a $4.1-million effort to relocate the visitor center at Northern California’s Lava Beds National Monument farther from delicate underground caves.

Although Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and National Park Service Director Fran Mainella issued a report last week lauding the Bush administration’s commitment to the park system, environmental advocates have criticized the administration’s support of national parks as limited in scope.

“We’ve been sorely disappointed,” said Courtney Cuff, the Pacific regional director for the National Parks Conservation Assn. “We’d like to see a better-faith effort to address that backlog.”

Increased numbers of visitors combined with inadequate funding have caused a 32% financial shortfall at more than 50 parks in the country, said Thomas Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Assn. Kiernan told lawmakers that adding another $600 million to the current funding level “seems in the realm of the doable.”

“The national park system tells the American story,” Kiernan said. “It represents the best and finest of this country.”