The Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park is benefitting greatly from the Great American Outdoors Act/NPS file
GAOA Successes Across The National Park System In 2022
By Lori Sonken
Across the National Park System, hundreds of millions of dollars obtained through the Great American Outdoors Act were put to work in the parks this past year.
One of the 81 National Park Service projects funded in Fiscal Years 2021 and 2022 is long overdue rehabilitation work at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. The need for the work was identified more than a decade ago, but it took a special funding vehicle to finally get the work underway.
That vehicle is the Great American Outdoors Act, or GAOA. Enacted in 2020, GAOA established the Legacy Restoration Fund to address overdue maintenance needs at four federal agencies, including the National Park Service. Under the law, the agency will receive $6.5 billion over five years for deferred maintenance and repairs -– the estimate of how much it costs to repair and restore deteriorating assets to an acceptable and safe condition.
It's a good start, but meager in the big picture.
Ahwahnee's Woes
Robert Anderson loved giving tours of the kitchen at The Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park where he held several positions over 25 years, including executive chef. Anderson and his wife, Mary, the lead bartender he met and married while working at the park, encountered actors, musicians, and politicians, along with hikers and others who came to dine.
“The coolest guest was First Lady Laura Bush. I don’t get star struck but I was a little star stuck. She was super gracious, super nice,” and he said she appreciated the lobster tamales he prepared.
Anderson left his position at the Ahwahnee in 2018, but he remembers liquids puddling on the noticeably warped 4,000-square-foot quarry-tiled floor. He’s not surprised the floor is slated for replacement. The hotel – a National Historic Landmark built in 1926-1927 – will close this year for eight weeks during renovation.
Nearly $32 million in GAOA funding will be spent on seismic upgrades and kitchen renovations, and the entire hotel will be upgraded to withstand earthquakes. Aside from bracing the support walls and chimney, replacing window frames and the dining room glass, planned upgrades also include a new heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system.
But that's just one small aspect of GAOA work across the park system. The Park Service's deferred maintenance and repair backlog is $21.8 billion, including $7.1 billion needed for buildings, $5.2 billion for paved roads, and $1.3 billion for water systems. Other assets requiring repair include wastewater systems expected to cost $855 million; unpaved roads, $812 million; trails, $436 million; housing, $253 million; and campgrounds, $129 million. The GAOA won’t meet all needs but is expected to put a dent in the backlog.
The GAOA is providing the “largest investment in the National Park Service since World War II,” said Brian Bloodsworth, director of the Interior Department’s GAOA Program Management Office.
Visitor Safety And Resource Protection
Priority for GAOA spending is given to projects that protect the safety of park visitors, partners, employees, and the agency’s natural and cultural resources. When complete, the renovations and upgrades are expected to sustain or improve conservation activities and recreation opportunities. Parks across the country are benefiting from the funding infusion.
- Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Mass is receiving $27 million to address maintenance needs for buildings, structures, signage, and monuments The work is expected to continue through 2025, the 250th anniversary year of the opening battle of the American Revolution.
- Golden Gate National Recreation Area in California is getting $35 million to repair and seismically strengthen the concrete wharf on Alcatraz Island. Approximately $8 million is going to the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park in Texas to rehabilitate the historic Texas White House Complex.
- Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio received about $14 million to stabilize the riverbank at eight sites on the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail along the Cuyahoga River. Construction is scheduled to begin in March 2023.
- The Park Service provided almost $20 million to rehabilitate water, wastewater, and electrical distribution systems within Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Beginning in May, the Moraine Park Campground will close until summer 2024 to allow for a major construction project, including relocating electric power lines underground to reduce system damage caused by snow, wind, and falling tree branches that are electric and wildfire hazards. About 25 percent of the campsites are scheduled to receive electric hook-ups and improvements.
- Yellowstone National Park is replacing the deteriorating Lewis Bridge, built in 1960, and the Yellowstone River Bridge. In addition, 22 miles of the 30-foot-wide Loop Road between Old Faithful and West Thumb Road will be repaved. That work was scheduled for last year, but last June's historic flooding necessitated the roadwork be moved to Mammoth Hot Springs where the Old Gardiner Stage Road was upgraded to serve as a temporary entrance following June flooding that tore out sections of the North Entrance Road.
Of Yellowstone's 2.2-million acres, only 1,750 acres are dedicated to infrastructure, but this area “is incredibly important to visitor safety and experience,” said Superintendent Cam Sholly.
GAOA “has been immensely important to helping us address some of the most critical and neglected infrastructure in the park,” he added.
The Lyndon Baines Johnson western White House complex in Texas is being rehabilitated thanks to GAOA funding/NPS file
One of the largest GAOA investments underway is the rehabilitation of the northern section of the George Washington Memorial Parkway in northern Virginia where 70,000 vehicles travel daily. The $161 million project includes replacing the pavement and roadway drainage system; it’s the first rehabilitation since the parkway was completed in 1962.
This spring, repairs are planned at the historic fort that serves as the foundation for the Statue of Liberty and its pedestal. The Statue of Liberty National Monument in New York was awarded $22 million for safety and drainage improvements to preserve the monument’s structure and enhance visitor accessibility.
Without funding from the GAOA, parks would have to compete for other Park Service funding sources from the line-item construction program. This is where the Fort Wood granite wall rehabilitation project received funding, said Jerry Wills, public affairs officer, Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, in an email.
The GAOA “is also lifting all boats by freeing up appropriated funds from other accounts to cover projects such as repairing five sections of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail,” said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association.
GAOA Funds Expand Parks
GAOA also funds land acquisition. In Fiscal Year 2022, the Park Service is providing $55.4 million to purchase properties at 38 park units, including $12 million for Petrified Forest National Park, $6.1 million for Haleakalā National Park, $4.1 million at both Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site and Saguaro National Park, $2.8 million at Cumberland Island National Seashore, and $2.6 million at Gateway Arch National Park.
Sholly said the Park Service must protect its GAOA investment by making cyclical maintenance “so we don’t fall back into deferred maintenance in future years.”
Others share his perspective.
Anderson, former executive chef at The Ahwahnee Hotel, said it was known for more than two decades that the kitchen floor needed repair, but little was done.
“NPS/concessionaires are not good at asset maintenance in my opinion,” he said.
At a hearing last spring, U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks, asked Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to “quit deferring maintenance in the national parks” and maintain budgets to protect the $400 billion worth of assets within the Park Service.
This is easier said than done. Preventing the backlog from growing will likely require a realignment of defense and civilian budgets, said Bloodsworth.
GAOA is authorized through Fiscal Year 2025. NPCA has called for extending the law at least another five years. Congress is not yet considering legislation to reauthorize the statute but is expected to in the future.
