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National Park Service

Park Service maintenance backlog hits record high

Karen Chávez
Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Maintenance deferred at 400 national parks from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the Statue of Liberty in New York has ballooned to almost $12 billion, according to recently released information from the National Park Service.

Sunset from Desert View at the eastern edge of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona where $372 million in deferred maintenance has piled up.

That's a $440 million increase from the year before and a record high, according to a Park Service report for the 2015 fiscal year released Friday.

"Congress has underfunded the National Park Service for years, forcing cutbacks in staffing, maintenance, educational programs and other visitor services, taking a toll on these iconic and irreplaceable natural and historic resources,” Theresa Pierno, president and chief executive of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement. “We need to give these places the attention they deserve."

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Deferred maintenance has been a problem at National Park Service parks, historic sites and other areas for decades. The Government Accountability Office pointed out problems with the parks' maintenance management system as early as 1984; found a maintenance backlog of almost $2 billion in fiscal 1987, about $4 billion in today's dollars; reported on $6 billion in deferred maintenance in 1997, about $9 billion today; and then pointed out in 2003 that the agency, which was putting a new system in place to keep track of maintenance needs, had vastly underestimated the amount of upkeep needed.

The National Park Service celebrates its centennial Aug. 25, the day Yellowstone National Park was established. Many parks are having special events and yearlong hiking challenges to attract more people and new people to the parks, adding to the strain of crumbling roads and peeling paint on buildings.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs through here on its 469 miles of road from Cherokee, N.C., to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, has reached a record high deferred maintenance backlog. The parkway's $517 million deferred maintenance total is among the five nation's worst, according to the report.

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The others in the top five:

  • The National Mall in the District of Columbia, $840 million.
  • Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey and New York, $731 million.
  • Yellowstone National Park in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, $603 million.
  • Yosemite National Park in California, $555 million. 

The parkway is the National Park Service's most visited site with 15 million visitors in 2015, slightly more than Golden Gate National Recreation Area. By comparison, Golden Gate’s maintenance backlog is $278 million.

The parkway’s annual budget has remained flat for many years, at $15.6 million this past fiscal year.

“That’s indicative that infrastructure continues to age and costs continue to grow and the cost of doing business grows greater each year,” parkway spokeswoman Leesa Brandon said. “When you see all that put together, you see the deferred maintenance continues to grow.”

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Buildings, campgrounds and trails are in need of maintenance, but paved road repairs make up the parkway's biggest need. The parkway was built in the 1930s and crosses the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina and Virginia.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which was the most visited national park in 2015 with 10.7 million visitors, chipped away at some of its maintenance needs last year, park spokeswoman Dana Soehn said. The park’s total deferred maintenance backlog for 2015 was $232 million, down nearly 5% from 2014.

The park, which has an annual budget of $18.8 million, relies heavily on money from the nonprofit Friends of the Smokies, which helped pay for the Oconaluftee Visitor Center in 2010.

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“One of the things we do when we bring a new facility online is to make sure it has very efficient heating and cooling and lighting to make it more efficient and sustainable,” she said.

Deferred maintenance is necessary work — performed on infrastructure such as roads and bridges, visitor centers, trails and campgrounds — that has been delayed for more than a year. Aging facilities, increasing use of parks and scarce resources contribute to the growing backlog.

“While Congress provided increases this year, the annual bill for maintenance in America’s national parks is still almost twice as much as is appropriated,” Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said in a statement.

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Money from Congress for the National Park Service this fiscal year included an additional $90 million for nontransportation maintenance. Congress also passed a highway bill providing a $28 million increase for transportation projects in parks this year.

Money for transportation-related maintenance and construction will continue to rise by $8 million a year for five years until it reaches $300 million a year in 2020.

Even though more maintenance had to be deferred in 2015, the increases from Congress are welcome. Jarvis said the monies are part of a plan to end the growth of deferred maintenance and eventually have enough resources to keep pace with annual maintenance responsibilities.

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This week, the National Park Service announced nearly $48 million in Centennial Challenge projects to help parks across the country improve visitor services and support outreach to new audiences as well as tackle deferred maintenance.

"A hundred years ago people sat around and talked about forming a National Park Service," said Carolyn Ward, the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation's executive director. "That took vision and guts and commitment.

"I’m afraid if we don’t get that same level of commitment from the community, I have a lot of fear for our national parks 100 years from now," she said. "Unless we’re willing to stand up and protect and preserve, that maintenance backlog will continue to grow.”

Contributing: Jessica Swarner, Cronkite News Service for The Arizona Republic. Follow Karen Chávez on Twitter: @KarenChavezACT

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