America's infrastructure project should start with parks
As President Trump works on his pledge to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure, here’s a great place he can start: America’s national parks. Preserving and maintaining these American treasures is something all of us, across party lines, can agree should be a top priority.
As a veteran who served 20 years in the United States military and who now spends much of my free time in many gorgeous national parks near my Pacific Northwest home, I’m appealing to the President and Congress to step up and fund crucial deferred maintenance now.
Amid the incredible landscapes in our National Park System, like the Hoh Rainforest or the places that preserve our country’s history, is the increasingly glaring problem of crumbling roads and bridges, neglected historic buildings and deteriorating trails. Decades of congressional underfunding has led to an estimated $11.3 billion backlog of deferred maintenance projects. No park is immune. Olympic National Park has a $139 million backlog, which includes more than $105 million in road repairs and more than $10 million in building repairs. Mount Rainier has $285 million in repair needs and $21 million is needed at North Cascades.
Like any national park visitor, I go to experience the splendor of nature. But these places carry extra meaning for us veterans. Devoting ourselves to service is something 92 percent of us say we want after our time in the military. Now, when they need such dire attention, the parks are the best places I can imagine to put the call of duty — the same call that drew us to military service — to work on our own soil.
My fellow veterans and I are doing our part to protect the parks for future generations, but we need help from the federal government. Recently, Washington Congressmen Derek Kilmer and Dave Reichert introduced legislation to make a concerted effort to making these repairs. The National Park Service Legacy Act, along with an identical Senate bill supported by Senator Patty Murray, would eventually allocate $500 million annually to the Park Service from existing revenues the government receives for oil and natural gas royalties, every year, until 2047.
It is time for Congress to renew its commitment to our national parks. In addition to the restorative, rejuvenating effect the parks have on veterans and all visitors, maintaining the parks just makes good economic sense.
The parks serve as economic drivers for local communities. For every dollar invested in the NPS, $10 is returned to cities and towns. National park visitation generated $34.9 billion for the U.S. economy in 2016, while supporting hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs.
The national parks are "the best idea we ever had,” said writer Wallace Stegner. “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." My fellow veterans at The Mission Continues and I will continue to do hands-on projects at national parks across the country. We ask that Congress meet our efforts by investing in critical repairs. Together, we can protect these American lands for many generations to come.
By: Doug Pfeffer
Source: Kitsap Sun