| Some 88 years ago, Congress
authorized the creation of the National Park Service.
The preamble of the Organic Act of 1916 said the
intent
of the newly formed agency would be "to conserve the scenery and the natural
and historic objects and wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of
the same in such manner and by such
means
as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
More than 50 years later, Edward Abbey would declare this mission a "contradictory
mandate." After all, the need to "provide for the enjoyment" of
the people with access roads and facilities clearly competes with the dissenting
need to leave the park resources "unimpaired" for future generations,
if the term unimpaired is interpreted in the strictest sense of the word.
What Ed Abbey didn't foresee when he yanked those road survey stakes from
the high Utah desert, and what his eventual musings in Desert Solitaire failed
to conceive, was the ultimate reconciliation of these two seemingly polar mandates
of the National Park Service nearly a century after they were originally written.
Systemwide, the
national parks
Today, the real irony sets in when we discuss an estimated
$4.6 billion backlog of maintenance needs at our parks -
accruing costs from years of use and over-use
of the facilities that the Park Service provides and administers for our enjoyment.
Since Abbey's well-known critique of the agency, the focal point of the
debate for conservationists has shifted profoundly. Today, conservation groups
are not trying to prevent the paving of our parks, but rather, they are trying
to maintain park facilities so that repair efforts keep pace with the ever-increasing
levels of degeneration from increased use.
The fury of political discourse, with charges and counter-charges, has since
enveloped the issue of the maintenance backlog, hindering the public's
ability to understand what is happening to our most cherished natural, cultural
and historical assets: the units in the National Park System.
Conservationists
predict gloom and doom saying that the Bush administration is using "creative
accounting" to deceive us about the condition of our parks (1). Secretary
of the Interior Gale Norton claims, "Never before have our parks received
so much care"(2).
Who ought we to believe? Are things peachy or in utter turmoil? Just what is
being done to restore the health of our parks? What is being done for the parks
here in the Rocky Mountains?
Our continued investment in these areas that form
our backyard, our memories, and for many of us, our economic lifeblood,
is of salient concern for all citizens of the Rocky Mountain West.
The Colorado College State of the Rockies Project has begun an initial inquiry
into these questions using public-use statistics and data obtained by Freedom
of Information Act request that for the first time ever details the levels of
deferred maintenance at each park unit in the country for seven of the principal
assets of the parks: buildings, campgrounds, housing, trails, unpaved roads,
waste-water systems, and water systems.
The recently released report "Deferred
Maintenance and the Health of our National Parks: A Mid-term Report Card" (available
at www.coloradocollege.edu/stateoftherockies)
looks at this newly quantified portion of the maintenance backlog and planned
projects to alleviate it by 2009
for the U.S., regions, and by park here in the Rocky Mountains (the states of
AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, UT, and WY).
The report is an initial attempt to sort
out the highly charged issue of the "maintenance backlog" that bedevils
our parks and those who pay for and manage them. Final grades for each park unit
in the Rocky Mountains will be a part of this year's 2005 State of the
Rockies Report Card to be released at the annual State of the Rockies Conference,
April 5-7.
Data from the mid-term report supports the principal claim made by Bush administration
officials. Systemwide, the national parks are receiving more funding per visitor,
per acre and per employee than they have before.
With a little more context though, the picture looks quite different. This
claim could be made nearly every fiscal year since 1994. Moreover, average annual
growth
in funding per visitor, per acre, and per employee has declined in recent years
for many park regions, including the Rocky Mountain Region.
Here in the Rockies,
the total number of NPS employees grew by an average of about 91 new employees
during the period from 1994-2001. Since then, growth in new employees for the
region averages only 14 new hires annually. Similarly, average annual growth
in appropriations per acre has dropped from 1.9 percent during the Clinton-era
to
only
0.5 percent from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2005.
One claim clearly will not hold however. Candidate George W. Bush stated in October
2000 that, if elected, he would devote "$5 billion to eliminate the backlog
in maintenance and improvements in our national parks" (3).
Our analysis
shows that even the quantified portion of the backlog, which currently does not
include cultural and natural resource maintenance needs, will not be close to
eliminated by the time President Bush leaves office.
Here in the Rockies, planned
funding will only address about 16 percent of the $773 million measure in deferred
maintenance needs from repair and rehabilitation projects through 2009. Additional
funding
from the fee-demonstration program and line-item construction projects may help
to alleviate about half of the maintenance backlog here in the Rockies over that
same time span.
Here in the Rockies,
Infuriated, as I'm sure you all are,
I recommend that you promptly contact the superintendents
at each
park you plan to visit and without haste, begin a
steady stream of letters to your senators to fix this problem. …
Or maybe there isn't a problem after all. Maybe the indictors of funding
per acre, per visitor, and per employee aren't telling indicators of park "health." Maybe,
we ought to think about managing the maintenance backlog to an acceptable level,
rather than pushing to eliminate it.
If you listen to the political rhetoric long enough, you might even find yourself
tirelessly fighting all the while to disprove it. You might just be missing
the real issues at hand in shaping the future health of our parks.
Sweeping change in how the National Park Service is conducting business is
having profound effects, especially here in the Rocky Mountains. Here's a brief
look at a few of the changes.
National Security
It's no secret that a large portion of the park-base funding increases
during this administration have gone to counter-terrorism
efforts. Most of these funds have gone to places like the National Capital
region parks in Washington D.C. and to places like Independence Hall and the
Statue
of Liberty, national assets we often forget about here in the Rockies.
Still,
other funds are coming into this region, most notably to border parks like
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the Mexican border and Glacier National
Park
along the Canadian border for increased border patrol and protection.
While we all will agree that protecting our national heritage from terrorist
attacks is an important action requiring adequate funding, we ought to think
carefully about whether this funding should come from within the Park Service
where it inevitably competes dollar for dollar with other park needs.
Consider
that Clinton-era base increases for environmental monitoring, restoration
and preservation have dropped from about 33 percent of all increased funds
to roughly
4 percent of increases in recent years, while counter-terrorism increases
topped out at 44 percent of all park-based increases during FY 2003. (NPS Budget
Justifications)
Efficient Planning and Spending
The Park Service's new Facility Management Software System (FMSS) has enabled
the agency to systematically inventory physical facility assets and apply industry
standards for preventative maintenance, cyclical maintenance, replacement,
and priority of improvement.
Cost-effective decisions that utilize an asset priority
index are in place at every park unit, enabling park planners to efficiently
address current and future maintenance needs. For the first time ever, when
Park Service officials consider the decision to build a new visitor center
or
other facility, they are considering the full costs of operating and maintaining
that
facility
in perpetuity.
Here in the Rockies, the advent of this system has meant everything from Yellowstone
National Park coming into compliance with its EPA water quality standards,
to the rehabilitation of the Many Glacier Hotel at Glacier National Park.
Cultural Resources
As mentioned earlier, the Park Service's current estimate of deferred maintenance
levels does not take into account cultural resources. Unlike the physical facilities,
such as wastewater systems that have industry standards for determining
their
current
replacement value and lifecycle, cultural resources have no clearly defined
means for estimating the costs to fix or replace them.
Ask any archaeologist the value
of an intact and treasured one-of-a-kind glimpse into early American settlement
and his or her response will be simply – priceless. Likewise, each
site
has a compelling urgency for preservation and restoration that hardly compares
to
a leaky visitor center roof.
So the Park Service has picked the low-hanging fruit first in attempting to
quantify and fix physical facility deferred maintenance. The agency is currently
exploring
ways to marry information about inventoried archaeological resources into a
cost-effective rehabilitation plan, but in the mean time, cultural resources
may be left waiting
in the wing.
Consider these findings:
• In FY 2004 the cultural resources cyclical maintenance program was eliminated
and joined with the facilities cyclical program, leaving cultural resource
preservation largely in the hands of facilities personnel rather than with trained
preservationists;
$10.415 million earmarked for cultural resource cyclical maintenance can now
be diverted to other priority maintenance needs.
• The goal to increase the number of archaeological sites inventoried by
22 percent since FY 1999 was not met, largely because sites had been destroyed
during
that time
period.
Here in the Rockies, Canyonlands National Park, renowned for its archaeological
resources, has never conducted a full inventory to identify all of them.
In reality, the outlook for our national parks is neither rosy nor bleak. The
initial efforts to adequately manage the deferred maintenance problems have
made significant headway in enabling the Park Service to better understand
and respond
to ongoing impairment of their assets.
Still there are many challenges and changes
that the new efforts have brought forth. An important and necessary immediate
step to improving the health of our national parks is to begin inventorying
and assessing cultural resource assets so that they may adequately compete
for funding
with physical assets.
Patrick Holmes is program coordinator for the
Colorado College State of the Rockies Project in Colorado
Springs,
CO. Each year the project provides an annual State
of the Rockies Report Card and Conference to inspire dialogue about the issues
affecting the Rocky Mountain West. www.coloradocollege.edu/stateoftherockies
(1) Berman, Dan. "National Parks: Norton Defends Bush Admin's Stewardship
of NPS," Greenwire Vol. 10 No. 9. 9 July 2004.
(2) Martin, Tom. "Statement by Tom Martin, Executive VP, National Parks
Conservation Association on Secretary Norton's Report on the National Park
System." U.S. Newswire. 8 July 2004.
(3) Bush, George W. "I will set high standards" USA TODAY. McLean,
Va. 27 Oct 2000: A26. |
