Click to view entire image

Without passage of legislation to address the National Park System's maintenance backlog, more and more of these signs could appear in the park system/Dolores Kong

Time is running out if Congress wants to prevent a government shutdown on December 7, when the current funding stream lapses for much of the government. House and Senate appropriators have proposed modest increases for the National Park Service, but that matters little if the measures stall.

Currently, the House is proposing a $3.25 billion Fiscal 2019 budget for the Park Service, a 1.7 percent increase above the agency's current $3.2 billion funding level. The Senate, meanwhile, has proposed a $3.21 billion budget, a slight 0.4 percent increase.

Both chambers are proposing cuts in the Park Service's Historic Preservation account, which was funded at $96.9 million for Fiscal 2018; the House number is down $5 million, while the Senate's number is down $8 million. The Park Service's allocation of Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars also would take a hit under the current proposals; an $8.6 million reduction from the current $180.9 million level in the House version, a $6.5 million cut in the Senate's.

The ongoing battle to reach an accord by December 7 lies both in efforts to avoid omnibus spending measures, and to reconcile House-Senate differences over how much to appropriate for the wall President Trump wants built along the southern border.

The House placed the appropriations bill for the Interior Department into a package with spending bills for the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of the Treasury, the judiciary, and the Executive Office of the President. The Interior component also contains language that would rename Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as a national park. It also would strip Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region, and block any judicial review of that action.

President Trump has said he wants at least $5 billion appropriated for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. While the House allocated $5 billion, the Senate's legislation calls for $1.6 billion.

Whether Congress takes up measures to begin to address the nearly $12 billion maintenance backlog across the National Park System and to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund remains to be seen. There are efforts underway to pull together a package of legislation that could include those measures.

At The Pew Charitable Trusts, Marcia Argust, who leads the Restore America's Parks initiative, was optimistic Wednesday that the deferred maintenance legislation would pass by year's end.

"Pew and other stakeholders continue to push for inclusion of Restore Our Parks legislation in an end of the year package," she said in an email. "Over half of House members and one-third of the Senate support legislation to provide dedicated funding for priority national park repairs, the administration supports the legislation, and a recent SSRS poll commissioned by Pew indicated that over 75 percent of Americans support the proposal. The bill (sponsors) are committed to getting this done." 

Last June, Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mark Warner (D-Virginia), Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), and Angus King (I-Maine) introduced the Restore Our Parks Act. In addition to those four senators, Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) and Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) signed on as cosponsors.

As drafted, the legislation would establish the “National Park Service Legacy Restoration Fund” to reduce the maintenance backlog by allocating existing revenues the government receives from on and offshore energy development. The $6.5 billion in funding envisioned by the legislation would come from 50 percent of all revenues that are not otherwise allocated and deposited into the General Treasury, not to exceed $1.3 billion each year for the next five years.

The National Park System's maintenance backlog didn't arise overnight, but has grown steadily through the years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. When he was running for president in 2001, George W. Bush said he would eliminate the backlog, which then stood at $4.9 billion, in five years. That, of course, didn't happen, and it has grown year by year, fed both by insufficient annual appropriations for the National Park Service, new problems that crop up, and as more than a few capital projects funded new construction rather than addressing maintenance needs, many tied to aging infrastructure.

If approved, the funding would be used to replace or repair wastewater treatment plants, patch potholes, restore hiking trails, fix restrooms, or put new roofs on visitor centers or lodges. Sixty-five percent of the funding would have to go to non-road projects.

Congress could provide as much, or as little, of that $1.3 billion as it deemed fit. Each year the Park Service would have to present Congress with its desired worklist for approval. So, if $1 billion was authorized for spending, the remaining $300 million for that year would remain in the account for future projects. The surpluses also could be invested, to generate additional funds.

If, after five years Congress considers the funding mechanism a success, it could reauthorize it.

Read Traveler's special report on the maintenance backlog and its impacts on this page.