A surprising $21.8 billion figured attached to the National Park Service's maintenance backlog raises questions of how Congress will react and whether it will provide more funding to tackle the backlog/NPS file

Word that the National Park Service's maintenance backlog is nearly $22 billion, whereas three years ago it was pegged at roughly $13 billion, raises questions of how it came to grow so rapidly and how Congress will react less than two years removed from passing legislation billed as cutting the backlog in half in five years.

Park Service officials have been quiet on the new figure. While the agency issued a press release a week ago announcing the new figure, it didn't fully explain how the $21.8 billion number was reached, other than saying the agency had "implemented a new and improved assessment process that provides a more complete and timely understanding of facility conditions and the cost to repair them."

Furthermore, the news was not attributed to any Park Service official, and neither Interior Secretary Deb Haaland nor NPS Director Chuck Sams, who has been making the rounds of the system to familiarize himself with the operations and staff, had a comment in the release.

A Traveler request to the Park Service for an explanation of how the figure went from roughly $13 billion early in 2019 to $21.8 billion now was not answered. Was it due to inflation, increased construction costs, or the ongoing accumulation of deferred maintenance? Or all three?

Apparently a key change that jumped the number was the decision to factor in design costs, compliance costs, supervision of construction contracts, project management costs, and related overhead, something other DOI bureaus routinely did but which somehow was lost on the Park Service.

"Those costs are significant, but were not officially added to the total backlog number before," John Garder, senior director for budget and appropriations at the National Parks Conservation Association, told the Traveler.

Phil Francis, the past chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, said it wasn't particularly surprising "when you look at the value of all the assets, that this number has gone up."

"Whether or not they're accurate, I don't know," Francis said on the Traveler's latest podcast, The National Park System's Crippling Maintenance Backlog. "We'll find out. But I guess one of the questions that I have, and one of the concerns that I have, is can we adequately --we, the National Park Service-- explain that to the Congress in such a way that it's persuasive, and that it has a lot of credibility?"

Congress in the past has balked at significantly attacking the maintenance backlog or significantly boosting the Park Service's annual budget. While the Great American Outdoors Act set aside $6.5 billion over five years specifically to be spent on reducing the backlog, there had been efforts leading up to that measure to be more aggressive in attacking it. Back in 2017, U.S. Sens. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, worked on what was called the "Parks Legacy Act."

"When they introduced it in 2017, that bill actually said, 'We will pay for the entire Park Service maintenance backlog," recalled Kristen Brengel, the NPCA's senior vice president for government affairs, on the podcast. "I don't even think it had a number on it. And so that bill was introduced first, in 2017, and then Senator [Lamar] Alexander [R-Tennessee], Senator [Angus] King [I-Maine], and others got involved and a negotiation ensued. And that's when the Restore the Parks bill emerged.

"It was decided with the Trump administration at the time that they were only willing to do $6.5 billion," Brengel continued. "And so there was a desire originally to take care of the entire maintenance backlog when that first bill was introduced. But there was a negotiation that occurred, and they capped it at $6.5 [billion] for the Park Service at the time. We went with it because we felt that it was far better to try to get rid of some of the maintenance backlog and the highest priority projects than nothing."

The NPCA official didn't disagree that the new $21.8 billion number is staggering when placed against the latest announce figured, but stressed the enormity, age, and value of the National Park System justified the expense.

"We have to reconcile a fact here. The Park Service has the second-most assets of any federal agency," she pointed out. "The Department of Defense is the only agency above the Park Service that has more assets. So, if we as a country believe that the parks are super important, and that we want to continue to take care of them, and they provide us, you know, our lungs, and fresh air, and our history, and we want to continue to protect and preserve all of that, then we have to say the 75,000 assets of these places need to be fixed. And that's buildings, roads, big things that need to be fixed.

"We're celebrating the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone," Brengel went on. "These places are old, their infrastructure is old, we have to just commit to fixing them long term. And if it's reauthorizing the Great American Outdoors Act, which NPCA is going to push for, that's one of the solutions. I talked with Senator King's staff a couple nights ago, they want to bump up [NPS's] appropriations significantly. This is a commitment that we need to make. And we need everyone's help in doing so."

Both Francis and Brengel acknowledged that park advocacy groups and the Park Service itself likely will encounter some resistance in getting Congress's support to spend more on the backlog.

"It's hard when you put a number out there and then you change it, and it doesn't appear to be incremental," said Brengel. "So, there's always difficulty in explaining it to folks, but everything needs to be repaired. You can't have sewage systems and water systems and roads and bridges and expect that they're going to last forever. Everything has a life cycle attached to it."

Francis also said he expected the Park Service to lean more on friends groups, those nonprofit organizations that originally came into being to provide a "margin of excellence" for parks but which in recent years have been asked to raise millions of dollars for projects that Congress arguably should fund.

For example, the Yosemite Conservancy raised $20 million to help the Park Service restore the Mariposa Grove of giant sequioas, the Grand Teton National Park Foundation raised $17 million or so to help the park restore the Jenny Lake area, and the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation has raised millions to repair and put a shine back on Flat Top Manor and to help reopen the Bluffs Restaurant. Friends of Acadia has, among other projects, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair the iconic stone bridges in Acadia National Park. Washington's National Park Fund has helped fund wildlife research, watershed restoration, trail work and more. The Glacier Conservancy has funded grasslands restoration, helped establish a management plan for emerging wildlife diseases, and worked to create a visitor-use management strategies with park staff.

The examples go on and on.

"I think there are groups that have some limits as to how much money they can actually raise," said Francis, who had a long career that included stints as superintendent at Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. "I remember being in a meeting with a very wealthy person who has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, and he said to the group, he said, 'You know,' he said, 'there's only so much I'm going to donate to the federal government, because I already pay a ton of taxes as it is.'

"And so," Francis continued, "I think there will be more pressure, and how much more money the friends groups can raise I'm not sure. But you're right. I think already there are programs that are being funded by nonprofits that are programs that would not have been able to be funded by nonprofits in the past because of policy considerations. And so I know that the Park Service is looking at, has looked at in fact, using fee money, for example, or donated funds to hire permanent employees or to fund permanent type programs. I think I think there's real danger in that.

"But I think the Park Service, their hands are tied, they really are. They've been placed in an untenable position where they're having to do things that they would have considered not acceptable in the past. They've been very creative. You know, they've gotten a lot done with what they have, and I think they should be applauded for it."

Traveler footnote: You can listen to Kurt Repanshek's entire conversation with Kristen Brengel and Phil Francis on the Traveler's latest podcast, The National Park System's Crippling Maintenance Backlog, when it's released Sunday, May 15, at 6 a.m. MST.