Spectrum: Parks face a mounting challenge
New Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the person now in charge of the bulk of the nation’s public lands, visited Alaska and Denali over Memorial Day weekend. It was a chance for him to start to understand Alaska and Alaska’s national parks, which are some of the best places and biggest spaces in the world. They are also an enormous economic engine for this state.
In 2016, there were 2.8 million visits to Alaska’s national parks, and parks were a destination for a vast majority of the record number of visitors Alaska saw last summer. According to the National Park Service, visitors to the national parks in Alaska spent nearly $1.3 billion in the state last year. Nationally, visitors spent over $18.4 billion in gateway communities near parks.
While parks are more popular than ever, they face an incredible challenge: $11.3 billion in needed infrastructure repairs, and not enough money to fix them. Rangers and other park staff do an amazing job protecting our parks, but the sheer scope of the deferred maintenance backlog makes this a big challenge. Needed repairs range from unmaintained trails to crumbling roads to visitor centers built over 50 years ago in desperate need of upgrades. Some projects would cost just a few thousand dollars to fix, while others could cost hundreds of millions. Some things can be replaced, while others like historical buildings, cannot.
Alaska parks are not immune to the infrastructure backlog issue. In Alaska, the Denali park road has over $25 million in overdue infrastructure maintenance. Wrangell St. Elias has over $8 million in overdue infrastructure maintenance, mostly tied to the Kennecott Mine and associated buildings and the stories they tell about Alaska’s mining past. The Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park faces an over $6 million backlog. Secretary Zinke named fixing the parks’ infrastructure backlog one of his top three priorities when he became Secretary.
Our national parks face infrastructure and budget challenges in large part because Congress has not made them a funding priority. The entire National Park Service budget makes up just 1/14th of one percent of the federal budget. In fact, the Park Service receives less than 60 cents out of every dollar it needs just to keep the backlog from growing, and the President’s proposed budget for the agency – which would be the largest cut to the agency since World War II – includes even further cuts to park maintenance despite Secretary Zinke’s stated commitment to reducing the backlog.
Recently, Representatives Will Hurd (R-TX), Derek Kilmer (D-WA), Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), and Dave Reichert (R-WA) introduced legislation to make a concerted effort to make these repairs. The National Park Service Legacy Act, the House companion to an identical Senate bill introduced by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Rob Portman (R-OH) earlier this year, 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.
This proposal, if enacted, would provide urgently needed relief for our parks. If left unchecked, these repair needs can jeopardize visitors’ experience in national parks. And repair needs in our parks can mean fewer visitors and subsequent impacts on the surrounding communities that depend on these parks for their economies.
Alaska’s national parks are awesome, and they drive an enormous portion of our thriving tourism industry. By investing in our national parks, we will ensure the parks can continue welcoming visitors eager to explore our nation’s most important natural and historic places. We ask our members of Congress to join the bi-partisan effort to ensure a healthy future for Alaska’s parks and they many Alaskans who depend on and enjoy them.
Source: Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman