Confronting the crisis in our national parks.

• Author: Ridenour, James M.

Despite occasional success stories, the national park system is slipping deeper into disrepair. Roads in Yellowstone are falling apart. Buildings need new roofs. Infrastructure items such as water, sewer, and utilities are in bad shape. Estimates of the maintenance backlog range from $2,000,000,000 to $8,000,000,000; no matter which estimate one believes, the number is big and getting bigger. The decaying infrastructure of the system is emblematic of the problem at all levels of government.

There are two strategies that need to be addressed: increasing revenues or decreasing expenditures. Some combination of these two strategies represent the only viable plan for putting the parks back on a path to a healthy status by 2010.

The Federal government has "thinned the blood" of the national parks system by adding units that do not meet the tests of national significance. This headlong rush into adding parks that do not belong in the system can be laid directly on the doorstep of Congress, which has treated the National Park Service as if it were an economic development agency, rather than the protector and conservator of the nation's finest resources.

Fiscal sanity appears to be more popular in Washington these days, but for the National Park Service, it comes a little late. Loaded with pork-barrel projects, the NPS finds itself struggling to keep the nation's finest natural and cultural resources alive and operational due to a drain that siphons off needed dollars to projects that more realistically should be operated by state or local government.

It doesn't take a genius to look at the list of national park units to understand how some of these sites came into existence. The entrance of many of these units onto the Federal payroll can be traced directly to the financial condition of state or local government at the time Congress brought them into the national system.

There was a proposed legislation a few years ago that would have addressed the issue of the NPS being loaded down with the financial burden of park sites of less than national significance. Opponents successfully labeled the legislation "a parks closure bill," and Congress got nervous and did not stand its ground on the issue despite strong bipartisan support from well-regarded parks-oriented legislators. That legislation, in some form, should be revisited.

Having less than deserving park sites on the national payroll is the single most costly issue the NPS deals with. It dwarfs other money-saving ideas that may help, but not heal, the system. There are a number of other possibilities that could increase revenues and decrease expenses, but they represent drops in the bucket compared to this major issue.

Most of the park sites I might list for reconsideration have tremendous value to the areas where they are located. These may be great tourist attractions or provide excellent local recreation opportunities. They even may have...