Critical bridge repairs, or a new structure, for Yellowstone National Park, new maintenance facilities at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and a new roof for the Mammoth Cave Hotel at Mammoth Cave National Park are among the dozens of deferred National Park System maintenance projects Interior Department officials on Friday said would benefit from funding through the Great American Outdoors Act.
In total, roughly $1.6 billion is to be spent on more than 160 deferred maintenance projects across lands and facilities managed by the National Park Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Bureau of Indian Education. Projects in the National Park System run the gamut, from campground improvements and water system repairs or replacements to highway bridges, roadwork, and restoring the marble colonnade on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
"We continue to make progress to deliver on the purpose of this historic conservation legislation," said Margaret Everson, the acting director of the Park Service. "We carefully evaluated each deferred maintenance project and land acquisition (through the Land and Water Conservation Fund) to maximize the return on investment for the American people and deliver on the promises of this unprecedented opportunity.”
The 12-page list of deferred maintenance projects released Friday afternoon doesn't attach dollar amounts to the projects. BLM projects dominate the list, with 99, while 50 Park Service projects were listed. The lack of financial information makes it difficult to measure the equity between the agencies when it came to allocating the $1.6 billion in the first year of the five-year project to address deferred maintenance on public lands.
Park Service officials no longer release the cost of that deferred maintenance, but it last was said to be nearly $12 billion.
"Given the importance of the opportunity presented by the Great American Outdoors Act, the Department of the Interior and the NPS must maximize the impact of each, and every dollar committed to this effort," Park Service Chief of Public Relations Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles explained when asked for project costs. "While we have finalized the list of project activities to be funded in 2021, we are still early in the process of ensuring we are maximizing every dollar entrusted to our care for the benefit of the public. Until contracts are awarded for individual activities it is premature to provide actual project costs."
Some of the projects have been waiting years for funding. The need to replace the Lewis River Bridge in Yellowstone was cited back in 2018, and it was hoped that work could have started this past spring.
Nearly six decades into its life, the bridge built in 1960 has reached old age and has deteriorated to the point where it either needs "extensive rehabilitation" or to be completely replaced. A Federal Highway Administration Inspection Report cited problems with the bridge’s concrete surface, foundation, and railings, and judged it to be in poor overall condition. Along with the decking and railing problems, the foundation that sinks beneath the river is being impacted by "scouring," in which the river currents essentially dig out the sediments and rubble around the abutments.
Replacement of the bridge is considered crucial; if it were deemed unsafe and closed, traffic entering Yellowstone through the park's South Entrance would run into a deadend at the Lewis River. In February 2019 the Park Service authorized replacement of the bridge once funding became available, though Interior's list Friday simply said funding would be used to "rehabilitate or completely replace the deck structure and other portions of the Lewis River Bridge."
Other Park Service projects on the list (attached below) include:
- Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska: Replace concessioner housing units, a project that "will allow the lodge rooms to be returned to public-use, increase the economic viability of the lodge, and relieve pressure on existing park housing."
- Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California: Rehabilitate Presidio building 643 (PE-643) for NPS maintenance operations (Phase 2), which will "provide space for GOGA's facility maintenance operations and address safety issues such as structural upgrades and hazardous material abatement."
- Sequoia National Park, California: Rehabilitate the Lodgepole Campground water system.
- Yosemite National Park, California: Rehabilitate the Tuolumne Meadows Campground.
- Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado: Rehabilitate the headquarters East Water System and Moraine Park Campground electrical distribution.
- Everglades National Park, Florida: Rehabilitate the marina bulkheads at Flamingo.
- Acadia National Park, Maine: Replace maintenance facilities at McFarland Hill headquarters.
- Glacier National Park, Montana: Rehabilitate the final 9.3 miles of the Going-to-the-Sun Road and replace the bridge over McDonald Creek.
- Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina: Rehabilitate and reconstruct 75.5 miles of mainline parkway within North Carolina (road segments 2B-2H) as well as associated overlooks, on/off ramps and park areas.
- Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota: This project includes the design, compliance, and repair of South Unit Scenic Road (Route 11). This project will evaluate and address multiple major roadway failure points, drainage systems, road base rebuild, and asphalt resurfacing along this corridor.
- Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, New Jersey/Pennsylvania: Repair the highest priority arterial road in the park, the Delaware Water Gap Loop Road, which is the only emergency route for adjacent communities.
- Saratoga National Historical Park, New York: Update the worn interpretive waysides along the tour road and complement them with new field exhibits utilizing Universal Design. The project is also to result in improved physical accessibility, making all routes to the waysides and site amenities accessible as well.
- Mount Rainier National Park, Washington: This project will rehabilitate the Ohanapecosh campground as well as sewer collection lines.
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Comments
Some of us have admittedly been a bit ambivalent about the Great American Outdoors Act from the start; leopards seldom change their spots and all that. But, we've all wanted to believe that the windfall for the national parks would turn out to be real. And, as this article reports, acting NPS Director Margaret Everson is sticking by her story that the NPS continues "to make progress to deliver on the purpose of this historic conservation legislation" evaluating "each deferred maintenance project and land acquisition (through the Land and Water Conservation Fund) to maximize the return on investment for the American people and deliver on the promises of this unprecedented opportunity." I hope that all turns out to be true.
However, according to other reports, now that the elections are over and Gianforte's money has bought him and his cronies the State of Montana as a wholly owned fiefdom, even Steve Daines, one of the champions and primary beneficiaries of the Great American Outdoors Act during the election campaign, is now having to defend the Great American Outdoors Act against his own party and the president who signed it. Well, he's defending it publicly at least.
One of these other reports, Lawmakers, advocates blast Bernhardt's LWCF order (https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063718493) indicates that Margaret's boss and patron, David Bernhardt, is already "attempting to circumvent Congressional intent" and add "unwanted new restrictions" on how Land and Water Conservation Fund monies, including monies generated through the Great American Outdoors Act, can be spent. These new restrictions are apparently "strikingly similar" to proposals that rightwing extremist Senator Mike Lee wanted added to the Great American Outdoors Act earlier this summer. Right now, the bulk of the concerns are focused on new restrictions that allow state and local governments to veto federal land purchases; but, it raises questions of whether these new restrictions might be just the beginning. Unfortunately, we're dealing with republicans and, again, leopards don't change their spots. The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee lamented, "This administration can't resist the urge to break the law, and this order is a perfect example of why they can't be trusted to protect our environment. They have no interest in conservation; even with clear direction and guidance from Congress, they're still doing their best to sabotage the Land and Water Conservation Fund. They're just trying to smash and grab whatever they can on their way out the door..."
And, Chris D’Angelo certainly didn't sugarcoat anything in his recent article, Trump Swiftly Blows Up His 1 Decent Conservation Action (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-undercuts-public-lands-law_n_5fb816...), as he bemoaned the fact that "The Trump administration wasted no time proving what was clear from the get-go: that its support of a major public lands bill was nothing more than pre-election greenwashing for President Donald Trump and two Senate allies."
Again, given the nature of the beast, I just hope the national parks ultimately actually get this deferred maintenance funding.
These are all good projects and important for each of the park's and the whole system. Nice to see them and I don't think it really matters if there is a dollar value or not as I am sure estimates need to be solidified. Given the look of the projects I suspect many are very large dollar amounts.
I hope all the folks who pushed for this law are pleased. I look forward to seeing the loat for next year as well.
Kurt - it might be interesting to find the funding totals since 70% of the annual potential of $1.9 billion from the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund (Section 2 of the Great American Outdoors Act) is supposed to go to NPS, with 15% to FS, 5% to FWS, 5% to BLM, and 5% to BIAE. Also, no less than 65% of the money is for non-transportation projects. PL 116-152
Hmmm, Steve Carwile, the article mentions that, when the NPS Chief of Public Relations was asked about project costs, she announced that the NPS has already "finalized the list of project activities to be funded in 2021." However, it's still "premature to provide actual project costs." Now, I recognize that the NPS no longer publicly releases deferred maintenance costs; but, Margaret and Jenny did release a "12-page list" of apparently uncosted deferred maintenance projects to publicly tease the effort. There also presumably had to be some basis for arriving at the "roughly $1.6 billion" figure contained in the Great American Outdoors Act to cover this "five-year project to address deferred maintenance on public lands." And, federal Fiscal Year 2021 started back on October 1st, which means that whatever the NPS really intends to efficiently do in 2021, if anything, they are already a couple of months into that budget cycle.
Back when I was "in the business" of developing line items and other capital acquisition projects, a couple of them were Major System Acquisitions and, by themselves, a third the size of this deferred maintenance campaign. And, each project absolutely had to have an annual construction plan, acquisition plan, and budget plan that all had to match up long, long, long, before any competent acquisition official would approve/finalize any "list of project activities" to ever proceed or be funded, much less pompously and publicly celebrated. So, those aspects of the article bothered me. I said nothing because we have so many rightwing nincompoops on here taking uneducated potshots that I didn't want to belabor the point and get them started.
However, I do worry about the rigor of the project management process behind this already "finalized ...list of project activities to be funded in 2021." Over the past few years, we have heard some much about Trump Administration plans and processes for pandemic response, a vaccine roll-out, oversight of the CARE Act and Paycheck Protection Program funding, implementation of tax plans, confirmation of cabinet and agency management, due judicial process, proper NEPA reviews, proper allocation and appropriation of funds for the border wall, proper execution of border detention procedures, proper adherance to international treaties on everything from climate change to refugees, and so much more. In every case, the talk was there; but, the walk wasn't. So, I'm wondering. Does the Department of the Interior really have a "finalized ...list of project activities" ready to go in 2021; have all of these activities completed their NEPA reviews; are work authorizations in place; and, if so, is all or even any of it in any state of readiness (remember when we had readiness reviews?) or is this more republicans blowing more politically pompous, but professionally incompetent, smoke? If this is really just political/public relations smoke, is there any competent process by which the statutorially designated proportional split of Great American Outdoors Act funding that you mention will be ensured or were/are the republicans just intending to address the language in the Act with their usual combination of incompetence, lies, bullying, lawlessness, and connived corruption?
Yes, some may blather on about how they don't think it really matters if there is a dollar value assigned to each activity or not and drool about being sure estimates need to be solidified; but, for anyone with any actual professional credentials in program or project mangement, it damn sure does matter already "finalized ...list of project activities to be funded in 2021." And, it damn sure does matter if, as you mention, there's a statutorially designated proportional split of funding dictated in the language of the Act.