WASHINGTON – With its 100th birthday fast approaching, the National Park Service finds itself nearing a critically important crossroads.
That’s because the economic boon provided by national park sites is in jeopardy because of the system’s aging infrastructure.
“Our nation is facing a very serious fiscal situation, so we must be looking at new and alternative ways to find funding for the Park System, and also to reassess our current funding priorities,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
According to the most recent data, NPS faced an $11.5 billion backlog in deferred maintenance at the end of fiscal year 2012.
Of the backlog, $4.7 billion is attributable to bridges and the nearly 10,000 miles of roads that fall under NPS’s jurisdiction.
Simply keeping the problem at that level would take nearly $700 million in annual spending—a number that is financially untenable given that the total operating budget was $2.2 billion last year.
In addition, park advocates fear that the expiration of a federal law that permits national park sites to directly reinvest visitor fees into maintenance projects may compound the problem.
In a time of already shrinking federal budget dollars, the National Park Service had just $444 million to spend on deferred maintenance projects in 2012, noted NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis.
“Managing this large of a deficiency with limited resources requires that we concentrate our efforts on correcting the most serious deficiencies in the most important assets,” Jarvis said.
Fortunately for the American public, Washington is at least acknowledging that these renovations and updates are important. At the behest of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Jarvis appeared on Capitol Hill last month to explain the bourgeoning backlog.
“You cannot just pretend that problems don’t exist,” said committee chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “You have got to step up and look at real, creative approaches to build bi-partisan support to address these concerns.”
According to the park service, its sites attract roughly 280 million visitors per year. The economic benefit of those visits is palpable— with each dollar invested in NPS operations engendering roughly $10 in gross revenue. Data also shows that for every two NPS jobs, an additional private sector job is created.
A 2011 report published by the National Parks Conservation Association further validated the economic boon national park sites provide. The conservation association said the overall return on investment for each dollar put in the national park system was $4.
Many of the nation’s most popular parks, preserves, monuments, and lakeshores fall under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. According to NPS, the largest unit of the system is Alaska’s 13.2 million acre Wrangell-St. Elias Park & Preserve, while the smallest is the .02 acre Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorial in Philadelphia.
“The thing that national parks have going for them is that they have incredibly high support across all sectors of the country,” said Dan Puskar, executive director at the Association of Partners for Public Lands. “There is an expectation by the American people that the government will take care of the national parks they created.”
Environmental advocates and congressional leaders are also worried about the looming expiration of the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act.
The law, authorized for 10 years, grants the National Park Service the authority to reinvest 80 percent to 100 percent of the fees it charges at recreation sites directly into park maintenance, development, security or environmental restoration.
The goal is to assure that those campgrounds, cabins and daily use sites remain solvent and operational for the foreseeable future. And while the money used to address deferred maintenance under that law is small compared to direct federal funding, it remains very important.
“It will mean another sequester or more,” said David MacDonald, president and CEO of Friends of Acadia, a nonprofit that works to safeguard the preservation of Acadia National Park in coastal Maine. “If that went away it would be devastating.”
MacDonald noted that Acadia, similar to many national parks, receives its money in three ways: from Congress, fees collected and retained through federal lands law, and private donations and grants.
“Those are the three legs of the stool and if you take one of those legs out it will be far worse than what we have seen from sequester,” he said.
Between 2005 and 2011, NPS funded nearly 9,000 projects under 2004 law.
The improvements are not always sexy, but they do tackle concerns at national park sites that have gone largely unaddressed due to fiscal tightening.
Experts say deferred maintenance needs must be dealt with in a timely manner in order to ensure an exceptional visitor experiences.
“It gives the American people a chance to really understand and appreciate the natural wonders,” said Puskar.
And while fees incurred through federal lands law are helping, NPS officials say that they toe a thin line when parks raise visitor fees to make up for lost revenues elsewhere.
“It is a delicate balance between how much you charge and making sure the public understands that their dollars are going back into the park,” said NPS director Jonathan Jarvis.
“We don’t want to price our national parks to the point that you are excluding part of the American public.”
The recreation fee program is set to expire in December 2014. Although it has gained some bi-partisan traction in Congress, its renewal is not guaranteed.
As a possible solution, Congress and NPS may look to the park service’s Centennial in 2016 as a way to galvanize private donations
However, the much-anticipated Centennial falls two years after the law’s expiration date in December 2014.
“What you need is a champion,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “We had a champion—Teddy [Roosevelt]. Somebody to go out and call on those with wealth in this country and tell them to come help us endow these parks.”
The key to that success, experts say, is making sure that the federal government holds up its end of the bargain and continues to appropriately fund the parks.
Craig Obey, vice president for governmental affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association notes that a public-private partnership has and can have a significant effect as long as the federal government is paying for core needs.
“Private donors and philanthropists are not simply going to be happy filling in the holes where the federal government is cutting,” he said. “If people feel like the feds are really putting skin in the game they will come forward and be enthusiastic about the parks going forward.”