Gateway National Recreation Area

A man fell four feet off a loading dock because he thought it was a short cut between the snack area and the bathroom. A motor vehicle accident resulted in the injury of all four occupants, two of whom had to be medevacked to the hospital. Another man passed out in the sand with waves breaking over his head. These were three of the 328 alcohol related incidents at the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area in the greater New York-New Jersey metro area between 2016 and 2018.

As Congress works in the coming months to reach accord on legislation that would provide billions of dollars to address the National Park System's nearly $12 billion in maintenance work that's been put off for a year or longer, the backlog continues to inch higher and higher. If a funding mechanism is passed, then the National Park Service will have to craft a national priority list of projects that need to be tackled. While that list doesn't exist yet, here's a look at some possible top priorities.

The health of America’s national parks depends upon the health of the waters that surround, and flow through, them. At the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), we work every day to protect and restore waterways across the country to benefit national parks, the communities that surround them, and the millions of people who visit them each year.

Under the category of "what were they thinking?" an employee for the National Park Service and one assigned to the office of the Secretary of Interior used government credit cards for personal expenses, according to investigations. In the Park Service case, the card was used to purchase a water heater for the personal residence of a supervisor at Gateway National Recreation Area in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, the investigators determined.