Visiting national parks could be hazardous to your health. That's the conclusion that can be drawn from a snapshot of health and safety conditions across the National Park System.
The assessment, made by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General, casts an alarming and greatly disturbing portrait of safety not just throughout the national parks, but across many, if not all, of the agencies that fall under Interior.
Reading the report, which you can find by following the "recently released reports" link at this site, it's almost a wonder that there hasn't been a serious accident somewhere within Interior's empire. Along with the National Park Service, Interior oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Prepared at Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's request, the report singled out the Wawona Tunnel in Yosemite National Park as a serious threat to human safety because the tunnel has gone two decades without serious attention to maintenance and safety.
The National Park Service has allowed crucial maintenance to lapse for years at many of its parks. For at least 20 years, NPS has not performed critical maintenance on its aging Wawona Tunnel located in Yosemite National Park. We concluded that the hazardous conditions in the tunnel endanger lives.
Indeed, one Park Service official told the Inspector General's staff that, "I am alarmed at the potential for a catastrophic event of massive and deadly proportions in the Wawona Tunnel."
While work is under way to correct the tunnel's problems -- repairing exhaust fans so all three can operate properly, addressing the lack of fire escape exits and carbon monoxide sensors, developing an emergency response plan -- the Inspector General's staff visited just 10 of the park system's 391 units, leaving open to question whether other serious health and safety problems are lurking.
Judging from written comments received by the inspection staff, Interior and its agencies have seemed to lack a safety culture.
Some of these comments revealed many health and safety conditions that are serious and have gone uncorrected. Comments also revealed instances in which safety is not a priority and where employees have been retaliated against for reporting health and safety issues.
The Department and its bureaus need to systematically identify and correct health and safety deficiencies by making the protection of employees and the public an integral part of their asset management process. They must take immediate steps to prevent existing hazardous from escalating into deadly ones.
In their sampling of 10 parks, the Inspector General's staff found:
* The headquarters administration office at Grand Teton National Park does not meet earthquake seismic safety codes. Park employees who work in the Moose Maintenance Facility are exposed to poor indoor air quality "caused by vehicle exhaust coming from a garage where snow plows, dump trucks, and ambulances were kept. The facility was also over-crowded."
* At Dinosaur National Monument, deterioration of the Visit Center, which has been closed, continues to "put the irreplaceable fossils at risk. The day-to-day maintenance that is essential to keep the building standing has not been performed. As a result, the fossils were being degraded by exposure to weather and vermin droppings."
* "Providing safe drinking water and properly disposing of wastewater at Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks present a growing risk to the health of employees and the public. Combined, these parks operate 47 drinking water and 42 wastewater systems. An official at Yosemite stated that the park struggles to keep its aging systems running and repairs are usually not made until the facilities break or fail. (my emphasis) In addition, two of Yosemite's water systems did not comply with federal health regulations and many of Yellowstone's systems were in various states of deterioration.
* "NPS pilots at Denali and Lake Clark national parks in Alaska work in conditions that have been reported as unsafe for nearly 10 years by Departmental aviation experts. The airplanes are primarily used for search and rescue, wildlife surveys, scientific research, and law enforcement patrol."
The report, issued late in March, prompted an immediate response from Secretary Kempthorne to address the deficiencies.
"He has made a personal commitment to the employees to improve health and safety agencywide," a spokeswoman for the secretary told the Washington Post. "When this report came out, the secretary deputized a deputy secretary to immediately create a task force to conduct an expedited review of its findings and recommendations."
Many of the problems can be traced to that incredible landscape that Interior oversees, coupled with a lack of resources, both financial and staff. For example, between Fiscal 2000 and Fiscal 2006 the backlog in Interior's maintenance programs ballooned "at least $2 billion," to somewhere between $9.6 billion and $17.3 billion, the report states.
"The Department faces the difficult challenge of maintaining an infrastructure valued at over $65 billion and spread over 500 million acres," the report notes. "The ability to adequately maintain this infrastructure is hampered by limited resources and the aging of the facilities. This infrastructure includes approximately 40,000 buildings; 4,200 bridges and tunnels; 126,000 miles of highways and roads, and; 2,500 dams as well as nearly every type of asset found in a local community."
And yet, Interior has just 175 full-time "safety professionals" to oversee its health and safety program.
Some other highlights of the report:
* The accident rate among Interior employees is one of the highest in the federal government. "During FY2006 4,409 workers' compensation claims were filed, representing a claim rate of 6.27 out of every 100 employees, exceeding the federal average by 41 percent. That year, the Department paid $58 million in claims and lost 15,000 days of employee work, which equates to 58 work years."
* Interior does not have "an organizational structure that facilitates an effective health and safety program."
* Interior does not have "effective coordination between the health and safety and asset management programs."
* Interior does not have "adequate numbers of trained safety staff."
* Interior does not have "an effective facility safety inspection program."
In response to the Inspector General's report, Secretary Kempthorne, among other things, appointed James Cason to oversee safety for Interior; agreed to create a position of Chief of Health and Safety; agreed to develop a department-wide action plan to eliminate significant health-and-safety deficiencies, and; agreed to create a funding strategy to address health and safety issues in a timely manner.
Comments
Regarding Beamis' idea to move parks from the US government to non-profit control is laughable. There would be less money available for maintenance if that happened. Interior is moving forward in all agencies to improve safety and facility maintenance. Since we the people are the government we need to keep talking this up to our representatives and voting for people who will spend money to rebuild America first instead of wasting money on massive military programs and overseas adventures. Read the news for the evidence of massive war profiteering and waste in the Defense Dept. It takes our collective attention and agitation before we'll see an improvement.
Beamis and Frank:
What fatigues me -- and a number of other NPT readers I've spoken with -- is that you repeatedly (and I suspect deliberately) fail to make the necessary distinction between the politically-appointed masters of the NPS and the public servants who work in the trenches despite those masters to achieve the mission of the agency. I for one, admire most of those colleagues and what they are attempting to accomplish as part of, yes, a United States Government bureaucracy. When you have reserved your suggestions for political reform and restructuring to the posts that are indeed on that subject, you'll see no argument from me. May I suggest (as Frank has indeed done in the past on occasion) that you stay germane to the topic Kurt leads with: in this case, there are severe safety issues in the national parks and other DOI facilities. While we await the governmental reorganization and wholesale replacement of most of the incumbent managers of the national park system that you so fervently wish for, I'll ask again, more specifically: what's your realistic solution?
J Longstreet
"We the People" ceased to be the government since the onset of the 2-party system, both losers know matter how you define the term. You have no true options any longer when it comes to your representation in Washington. Recently some good men have made the trip, seen the system, refused to play and left after one term. Rebuilding America first sounds so noble, but since Dem-donkeys and Rep-tuskers can't sustain the profiteering domestically without intense scrutiny from the media, foreign interests will be the primary source of political payback for the forseeable future. Which means funds being peed away to rebuilding foreign countries, supporting the overthrow of foreign governments and maintaining the ridiculous system of foreign aid in our "buy your allies" campaign. With funding for domestic programs of all nature continually being pared for the "war effort", whatever that may be, your faith remains with DC? Bureaucratic meddling knows no bounds, and if by chance there might be monies to divert to campaign supporters, the money will be cyphoned off prior to any real progress in "cosmetic" improvements to our homeland. Face it kids, Washington pols don't give a damn about what "the people" think, except for that brief period in an election year, where they will say literally ANYTHING to place a smile on your face, even though by now you must be absolutely stupid in you buy into their crap. Most are too concerned with lining their personal retirement funds and those of their financial supporters, and the only way to accomplish that is to play kiss-ass with the few tenured on Capital Hill. Since these programs don't fall under any particular "pork" jurisdiction with any real impact on local economies, little will be contemplated and even less with be enacted to bring the public lands up-to-date. There simply isn't enough money in it for DC to care about. Unless, of course, you happen to be a significant source of campaign funding...........
Removing the responsibility of maintenance and upkeep from Washington is not only practical, it's mandatory. They've done nothing but ignore the issue for decades, and the backlog continues to grow exponentially due to that negligence, and is not localized by region or any other factor. No place across the system are monies being allocated save those few projects that can be held up a "shining examples of your tax dollars at work" that play like press conferences in front of constituents and a media circus. A special taxing body needs to be enacted, independent of federal bullying and able to stand on its own as a true representation of "we the people". A system based on ALL citizens and taxpayers of the country equally, since we are indeed referring to what are supposed to be public lands. Possibly tied into your 1040. Possibly based on sales or utility taxes, or a deduction directly from your payroll based on any number of factors, such as family size. The possibilites are numerous as to the most efficient method of collecting the revenue. Whether you choose to utilize these lands or not, since you are part of the system you're responsible for the maintenance and upgrade, which is absolutely no different than the system as currently devised. The major differrence is that being removed from federal hands, the monies are more-than-likely to end up where they belong, as opposed to some Swiss bank accounts belonging to your ever-lovin' lobbyist groups. Sounds more than fair to me.
I'm a bit dismayed by the comment that blows off "Steamtown" as political pork. Railroading is a very large part of our Nation's historical and cultural heritage - to me it seems only appropriate that there should be a National Park Service Unit devoted to interpreting this historical and cultural legacy. On my visit to Steamtown, I was fascinated to see a railroad turn table in operation, and was entranced by the exhibits there that let me touch the stories of Americans from 100 years ago whose lives were shaped by the railroad.
Sabattis, the people who diss Steamtown -- and that is a LOT of park advocates -- have no quarrel with the commemoration of railroading history in the National Park System. The issue centers on the tainted political process that resulted in the selection of the Steamtown site. Steamtown would never have made the cut (there being so many more appropriate sites) were it not for a powerful Congressman who rammed it down the Park Service's throat. Now, in much the same manner that "Pearl Harbor" symbolizes sneak attack, Steamtown stands for "park barrel politics" -- the political process through which elected officials, with re-election in mind, subvert the objective site selection process and instead use back room vote-trading and raw political power to deliver national parks (read "tourism dollars and jobs") to their constituents back home.
I'd be curious to hear more about the establishment of Steamtown - and what other, more-worthy sites were passed up. Maybe it would be a good NPT article (if it hasn't been one already.)
But on the surface, though, how different is the establishment of Steamtown from the establishment of the John D. Rockefeller Parkway? One was established through Congress - another was established through the donation of a philanthropist.
You are not the majority, you just think you’re important and therefore think you must be the majority. If you were the majority the park service wouldn’t be around anymore!
State parks across the board do not have the money to be properly administered. When state budgets come out, it’s just like in Washington D.C., the parks suffer. Your solution is a non-solution; all it would cause is the closure and/or further degradation to the special places in America. And please, if you would leave places like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite in the hands of non-profits, you have another thing coming if you think they are going to be able to get enough cash flow to run these places without federal grants…. If the government is going to be funding them anyway, what’s the difference? The answer is difficult and your shoot from the hip quick fixes are not going to help anyone or any public lands.
Fight the disneylandification of your parks!!!!