WHAT WE DO

   Many national parks have had to defer maintenance projects because of decades of insufficient annual operating funds and staff. On average, national parks operate with only two-thirds of the needed funding, a system-wide shortfall in excess of $600 million annually. Without adequate resources to address day-to-day needs, a leaky roof quickly becomes a dilapidated building. According to a January 2003 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the maintenance backlog in the national parks now totals $4.1 billion to $6.8 billion.

   Critical backlog projects can be found throughout the National Park System, which includes some of the most spectacular landscapes in the country and some of the nation’s most historically significant sites. Some of the examples shared in the media over the past few years include:

• Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park has a backlog in excess of $100 million—half of which is road repair. Hikers cannot get to backcountry cabins because bridges and trails leading to the buildings are in disrepair.
• At Dry Tortugas National Park in South Florida, large sections of a historic lighthouse and Fort Jefferson—the largest all-masonry fortification in North America—are structurally unsafe. Fort Jefferson once held one of the nation’s most famous prisoners: Dr. Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set John Wilkes Booth’s leg, injured as the actor escaped from Ford’s Theatre after assassinating President Lincoln.
• The visitor center at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii is sinking and may cost as much as $20 million to repair—a cost that exceeds the entire annual budget for the seven national park sites in the state.
• Yosemite National Park has more than $40 million worth of backlog projects, including trail and campground maintenance, sewer system replacement, and electrical upgrades.
• The South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona houses numerous buildings designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, an architect whose work reflects Native American influences. Most of these structures, from the Hopi House to the Bright Angel Lodge, are on the National Register of Historic Landmarks but lack funds for preservation. These projects are counted among $60 million worth of backlog maintenance at the park.
• The $20-million maintenance backlog at Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area in Tennessee is affected by annual operating shortfalls that limit the Park Service’s ability to hire any seasonal employees this summer to help with maintenance.
• Ancient stone structures are literally collapsing at Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico.
• At Yellowstone, 150 miles of roads have not been repaired in years, and many of the park’s several hundred buildings, including those used to house park employees, are in woeful condition.
• Glacier’s backlog of deferred maintenance needs exceeds $400 million. The total includes $10 million to construct a new west-side visitor center, more than $150 million to stabilize historic hotels, and about $150 million to rehabilitate historic Going-to-the-Sun Road.
• The administration estimates that road and bridge rehabilitation in Alaska’s national parks will cost more than $27 million over the next six years.

   President Bush has pointed out some of these problems to underscore the importance of eliminating the maintenance backlog. In 2000, he cited a leaking roof at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. Four years later, the roof still leaks, but a partnership project is under way to build a new visitor center and museum to adequately preserve the historic cyclorama painting now housed in the original building.

   In the meantime, as reported by the York Sunday News, Gettysburg has $5.2 million worth of backlog maintenance needs. Park projects include rehabilitation of historic structures, repairing fences in the area of Gen. Pickett’s charge, replacing a failing water line, and restoration of the historic Culver House, site of the first shots of the battle. But because of insufficient operating funds, Gettysburg can’t fill six vacant maintenance positions this year, resulting in an estimated $215,900 in deferred maintenance work, which adds to the backlog.

   Gettysburg is not alone. “We address backlogged maintenance, but then we can’t maintain it properly and we end up with a backlog again,” Crater Lake National Park’s chief of maintenance told the Oregonian in September 2003.

   One means for addressing backlog maintenance is the Park Service’s Recreational Fee Demonstration Program, which allows some parks to charge entrance and recreational fees and retain at least 80 percent of funds collected for use on maintenance projects within that specific park. Since the fee demonstration program began in fiscal year 1997, it has provided $584 million to the Park Service, with another estimated $250 million in fiscal years 2003 and 2004. NPCA supports legislation to make the program permanent in national parks, currently pending in Congress.

   Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton recently celebrated Shenandoah National Park’s use of monies generated by the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program to support the restoration of historic structures at Rapidan Camp, President Herbert Hoover’s “summer White House.” Unfortunately, because of annual operating shortfalls, funding to maintain the site and interpret it for visitors remains uncertain.

   The “Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century” bill (TEA-21) now pending in Congress provides an additional source of funding to help address the national parks’ maintenance backlog. This bill is currently threatened with a presidential veto, but in 2000, the administration estimated that $2.7 billion would be available from the reauthorization of this transportation bill to meet the president’s pledge to eliminate the backlog.

   As it stands, the bill will not provide nearly this much funding, but could still help to address a significant chunk of the parks’ backlog maintenance needs. National parks currently receive $165 million annually through TEA-21. If Congress and the administration enact the Senate version of this legislation (S. 1072), the national parks stand to receive more than $300 million a year for the next six years, with $270 million available annually for road and bridge rehabilitation projects in the parks—a total investment of $1.6 billion.

   Action is needed—and soon.

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