National Park Service

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today because our national parks have been neglected for far too long.

Due to years of chronic underfunding, the Park Service has been forced to defer maintenance on thousands of assets, including trails, buildings, and historic structures, as well as thousands of miles of roads and bridges.

Today, the National Park Service faces a deferred maintenance backlog of nearly $12 billion. Incredibly, more than half of all Park Service assets are in dire need of repairs. Every member of this body has a national park in their State with a maintenance backlog of over a million dollars.

I will give you a few examples from my home State of Virginia.

At Richmond National Battlefield, the deferred maintenance backlog tops $6.5 million. At Petersburg Battlefield, one of our most historic national battlefields, the backlog is nearly $12 million, with well over half of these costs associated with the maintenance of historic buildings and landscapes.

Look at Shenandoah National Park, which is truly one of the crown jewels of the National Park Service. Unfortunately, Shenandoah has accumulated over $79 million in deferred maintenance, which can impact the ability of visitors to take in the breathtaking sights along Skyline Drive or explore the historic Appalachian Trail.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, ``America's Favorite Drive,'' has over $460 million in deferred maintenance needs. That is almost $1 million per mile of the parkway. Over $186 million is needed in Virginia to address the parkway's backlog and ensure visitors can continue to enjoy the beauty of the Appalachian Highlands.

I will give one final example: Colonial National Historical Park, which is home to Historic Jamestown and the Yorktown Battlefield. At that park alone, we have deferred maintenance needs totaling over $420 million.

In just the last year, the maintenance backlog at Park Service sites in Virginia grew by $250 million, to over a billion dollars. Virginia now ranks third among all States in total deferred maintenance, trailing only California and the District of Columbia.

We hear lots of talk in Washington about rebuilding our infrastructure, but sometimes, we forget that a great way to begin is by revitalizing our national parks, an investment which can generate $10 in economic activity for every public dollar invested. A recent study found that fixing our national parks would create over 100,000 jobs nationwide. In Virginia, we could create nearly 10,000 jobs just by clearing the maintenance backlog.

To that end, last year Senators Portman, King, Alexander, and I introduced the National Park Service Legacy Act, which would utilize otherwise unobligated Federal mineral revenues to reduce the backlog over a 30-year period.

Since then, we have worked with a broad coalition of stakeholders, including the administration, to produce this bipartisan consensus bill to reduce the maintenance backlog at the Park Service.

Like the Legacy Act, the Restore Our Parks Act would create a fund at the Treasury Department, which would be used exclusively to address high-priority deferred maintenance needs. This fund would receive 50 percent of all unobligated annual Federal mineral revenues.

It is important to emphasize that the fund would only receive unobligated mineral revenues, meaning that allocations for other programs, such as the Land and Water Conservation Fund, would not be affected by this legislation.

In total, the bill is expected to raise $6.5 billion over 5 years, enough to address more than half of the current deferred maintenance backlog and completely fund the highest priority deferred maintenance projects.

This represents one of the most significant investments in the infrastructure of our national parks in the 100-year history of the Park Service. That is one reason why it has gained the support of over 100 organizations, including the Pew Charitable Trusts, the National Parks Conservation Association, and many others.

More importantly, a recent poll found overwhelming support for this legislation among the American people; 76 percent of Americans support the Restore Our Parks Act.

While this legislation will not address all of the funding problems plaguing the Park Service, it is an important first step to addressing our deferred maintenance backlog.

Again, I want to reiterate my appreciation to Senator Portman, Senator Alexander, and Senator King for their work recognizing the importance of properly funding and maintaining our National Park System. I also want to thank the administration for its support and willingness to advance this important legislation on a bipartisan basis.

I think we all agree that the time for action is now. Congress cannot continue to deny the Park Service the resources it needs to properly maintain these national treasures for future generations.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this commonsense legislation. Tribute to Senator Hatch

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