There are many infrastructure needs in the National Park System/NPS file
President Biden's highly ambitious, and expensive, infrastructure proposal carries great possibilities for the worn and weary National Park System, though whether any will be realized is far from a sure thing. Indeed, with a keenly divided and divisive Congress it's not even a given that the $2 trillion proposal will gain acceptance, and most certainly not in its current form. Also unknown is how, or even if, the package would directly help the parks.
Indirectly, the package could help improve the air quality over national parks and possibly reduce climate-change impacts to the parks and their natural resources by addressing needs beyond park borders.
According to an Interior Department release, the package calls for investing $16 billion "to put hundreds of thousands to work in union jobs plugging oil and gas wells and restoring and reclaiming abandoned coal, hardrock, and uranium mines. In addition to creating good jobs in hard-hit communities, this investment will reduce the methane and brine that leaks from these wells, just as we invest in reducing leaks from other sources like aging pipes and distribution systems."
"Fulfilling the President’s commitment to addressing the nation’s climate crisis," the release continued, "the plan also calls for establishing a Civilian Climate Corps, a $10 billion effort to put a new generation of Americans to work conserving and restoring public lands and waters, increasing reforestation, increasing carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protecting biodiversity, improving access to recreation, and addressing the changing climate."
Though specific details are few, and the existence of the Great American Outdoors Act that is funneling $1.3 billion a year into the park system to address the maintenance backlog might convince Congress that the parks don't need more funding through the infrastructure package, Biden's initiative is drawing praise from park advocates.
“Climate change, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, and racial disparities are all having a major impact on our country. Our national parks and public lands are also overwhelmed by these same threats," said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association. "But these challenges also present opportunities to mark a new era for our public lands and communities. With the innovative and bold solutions President Biden laid out, we can tackle these challenges and make our national parks, and their air, water, and wildlife stronger and better than ever before."
Pierno said it was imperative that any infrastructure plan adopted by Congress "goes beyond simply rebuilding existing park roads and bridges." Instead, she said last week after Biden unveiled his plan, there needs to be "a new focus on resilient infrastructure that can withstand intensifying climate change impacts. We must prioritize protecting wildlife and their habitats and reach for bold goals like moving our country towards a decarbonized future. And above all, we must put local communities at the forefront in restoring our national parks and public lands."
But the plan also is being panned by Republicans in Congress.
“Democrats are offering to hamstring the economy with higher energy bills and higher taxes for families in Wyoming and across the country," said Sen. John Barasso, a Wyoming Republican who is the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "Republicans want to protect our energy dominance, and let hardworking Americans keep the money they earned. President Biden should change course and look to our bipartisan highway bill from the last Congress if he is really interested in improving our infrastructure.”
Across the hall, in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Bruce Westermen, R-Arkansas, who is the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, also dismissed the proposal.
"In President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure package, only $115 billion goes to traditional public works projects such as roads, highways, and bridges. The rest is earmarked for progressive priorities such as:
➡ $620 billion for green energy subsidies and union payouts
➡ $174 billion for electric vehicles
➡ $400 billion to expand Medicaid and subsidize home healthcare workers income
➡ $100 billion for renewable energy job training
"This feels like a bad April Fool’s joke," he said.
Park advocates likely will argue, if they get the chance, that the park system surely deserves some trickle-down from any infrastructure package passed by Congress despite the aid arriving from the GAOA. Though $1.3 billion a year helps attack the maintenance backlog that could be somewhere around $12-$13 billion (the Interior Department under President Trump stopped issuing releases regarding the growing price tag), it alone won't get the job done.
In February 2020 the Park Service released a list of "mega projects" that carried a combined cost of $1.2 billion. They ranged from $25 million to pay for the Toklat River Bridge & Causeway Replacement at Denali National Park and Preserve to $187 million for Blue Ridge Parkway Road and Bridge Reconstruction in Virginia and North Carolina (later this month a stretch of the parkway will be closed so work can begin on rehabilitation of the Roanoke River Bridge).
Billions of more dollars are needed throughout the park system to address maintenance at visitor centers, park housing, campgrounds, wastewater treatment facilities, boat docks, trails, parking lots, foot bridges and more.
"Currently, the National Park Service has a more than $13 billion backlog in infrastructure repair needs, including restoration of historic buildings, maintenance of campgrounds and trails, and rehabilitation of visitor access roads, among others. The Great American Outdoors Act that was passed last August provides $6.5 billion to those priority deferred maintenance needs during the next five years," said Tom St. Hilaire, the senior officer for The Pew Charitable Trusts' National Parks Campaign. "Funding for those projects have been approved and already are seeing progress on the ground. When details of the administration’s infrastructure package are revealed, it will be imperative that we find among the proposal funding to complement dollars spent on projects connected to the GAO Act, so that we can fully take care of those priority projects.
"In addition, since the GAO Act provides more funding on non-transportation needs than transportation projects, the administration’s proposal will need to address the multi-billion-dollar backlog for maintaining and updating the NPS’ transportation network, which includes more than 12,500 miles of roads, 1,700 road bridges, and 70 road tunnels, among other assets," he added in an email. "We also encourage NPS to develop accountability standards for implementation work done under the auspices of the administration’s infrastructure package, to regularly monitor progress and spending, and to develop benchmarks for success, just as we would like them to do for the GAO Act. The agency has a responsibility to be transparent in how it is tackling the deferred maintenance backlog."
Last week Interior announced disbursement of $1.6 billion for projects across the public lands system, including the park system. Three million dollars is going to complete restoration of the outside of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., $3.4 million is being spent at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio to demolish 39 dilapidated structures and restore the lands to natural conditions, $18.6 million is going to Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Washington state to restore "(H)istoric Main Parade Ground Barracks Building, Parking Areas, and Pathways for Visitor and Tenant Use," and nearly $16 million is being spent at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming to "eliminate ongoing and worsening leaks and water infiltration of the roof for the Park Headquarters Complex, including Teton Interagency Dispatch Center."
More park funding projects can be found here.
At the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, Phil Francis was optimistic an infrastructure package adopted by Congress would have some benefit for the parks.
"Since the NPS manages a huge amount of infrastructure, there are opportunities to make investments, and since we have science personnel and lots of interest in addressing climate change in terms of infrastructure improvements, research and public education, there are even more areas where funds could be useful," said Francis in an email.
Back at NPCA, Pierno said the president's package would greatly benefit the economy as well as address much-need infrastructure work.
"By addressing these infrastructure needs and supporting clean energy at national parks across the country, the administration and Congress will not only help protect our parks for future generations but also generate tens of thousands of infrastructure-related jobs, bringing much-needed relief to local communities suffering through hard times," she said.
“President Biden has pledged to build our communities and public lands back better than ever. This is a difficult task, but we all must rise to this challenge if we want to protect our national parks for our children and grandchildren to experience. We will hold the President and Congress to this promise and work alongside everyone to set a new course for a better, stronger and more inclusive National Park System,” Pierno said.
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Comments
Silly question. WHERE is this money coming from? We've already spent $4-5 TRILLION dollars we do not have, and now we want to spend money shutting down oil and gas wells? We'll spend another $2 TRILLION just to get 1/2 of 1% of that to fix up the Parks?
If you want to spend money on the Parks, great, fantastic, but cut something else out of the budget to pay for it. Do NOT indebt every man, woman and child in this country for another $6000 (of which $30 would go to the Parks), on top of the $340,000 each of us alreay owe.
Spend the money. The parks need the funds.
Funding for Great American Outsoors Act is derived from leasing revenues from energy production on federal lands. Seems like an excellent use of those revenues. Not sure what happens if the revenue goes down on existing leases as new leases remain on hold under President Biden.
Don't worry none of our national debt will ever be re-paid. Eventually, all fiat currencies will burn themselves out and the countries of the world will probably go to a "Digital Banking Currency" and all fiat debt will simply be forgiven. Stimulus checks for the majority of Americans are already deposited digitally. Inflation will be horrible though. As for the National Parks, they have been under-funded for awhile. At least "The Great American Outdoors Act" was passed last year. GAOA will not solve all issues, but its a great start. Love the full funding for LWCF. For too long LWCF has been under-funded. Great Article Kurt, last year you brought up the fact that more funding is needed for NPS.
Infrastructure investments tend to have some of both the highest and the most extensive simultaneous multi-layered dollar multiplier impacts of any investments.
For example, infrastructure investments, whether repairs to a road or bridge or replacement of lead water pipes or expansion of power or communications networks, all start with a professional design, engineering, and consulting phase, with the investment funding first fanning out horizontally at that social level, then dropping down through the levels where those funds are subsequently spent, and with the dollar impacts and tax revenues back to the government being multiplied each time the dollars turn over.
There is then the procurement of construction materials, whether structural steel or rebar or modern composite piping materials or copper or fiber tranmission materials. This phase has immediate dollar turnover benefits in the transportation and logistics areas, as well as long term returns as the use of those materials results in multiplier benefits in construction labor expenditures. Many misguided comments have decried the fact that much of these materials would be procured from overseas; however, those comments ignore the facts, first, that the dollars involved will ultimately also multiply as they come back to spur our own exports and, second, these materials will often have originally been American materials, originally used here, discarded here, resold overseas, recycled, remanufactured, and now sent back. Having the materials back here is an essential first step in the process of restarting American recycling and remanufacturing capabilities.
Infrastructure fabrication, construction, and installation tasks are labor intensive and obviously have high dollar multiplier and subsequent tax revenue effects. Each of those dollars is almost immediately respent in job training, tools, equipment, transportation, groceries, clothing, school supplies, healthcare, family education, furniture, or any one of a myriad of industrial, service, or supply sectors, with those same dollars continuing to percolate up, down, across, and through the economy for years.
Then, there are the dollar multiplier effects of the completed infrastructure itself, in reduced shipping costs, reduced societal medical costs due to safer travel and cleaner air and water, faster and cheaper communications and data collection and application.
Anyone who says that infrastructure spending is not going to contribute productively to our economy and in a major way is ignorant of basic economics and taxation dynamics. Their questions truly are silly. Don't listen to them.
It is the person that believes in government confiscation of assets that is truly ignorant of basic economics and taxation dynamics. No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.
Define assets. If all you care about is your gold coins, then stay in your dungeon and count them. Avoid use of all publically funded projects and never go to northern Europe where in fact they have taxed themselves into prosperity, ranking as some of the happiest countries in the world. Meanwhile, America has the highest suicide rate, the highest addiction rate, the highest obesity rate, the highest rate of preventable deaths and a rapidly disappearing middle-income population. Spend the money: improve our parks, create more jobs, invest in the future. Tax the corporations and 1%, and cut the bloated defense budget by half. Problem solved.
Yes SmK, they are so happy that everyone, including you, are flocking to northern Europe to live. And no we don't have the highest suicide rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate . Drugs and obesity are cultural problems, not economic ones. Our poor our richer than 90% of the rest of the worlds inhabitants . Thee is no such thing as a corporate tax, they just pass it on to the consumer, hurting the ones that can least afford it. Finally there isn't anywhere near enough money owned by 1% to pay for all the lala land wishes of the left. By all means, pass a bill to fund the parks - oh, thats right Trump already did that. Forget the rest of BS giveaways and wealth transfers.