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NATIONAL PARKS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 12, 2005

Serial No. 109–137

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

MARK PFUNDSTEIN, Professional Staff Member

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 12, 2005 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Malmberg, J. Paul, regional director, Washington State Parks, Southwest

Region; Sally Jewell, trustee, National Parks Conservation Association;

Rex Derr, director, Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission; Tim Wood, director, Oregon State Parks; Russ Dickenson, former

director, National Park Service; and Rod Fleck, city attorney/planner,

Forks, WA ...................................................................................................... 39

Dickenson, Russ ........................................................................................ 62

Fleck, Rod .................................................................................................. 66

Jewell, Sally ............................................................................................... 45

Malmberg, J. Paul ..................................................................................... 39

Muldoon, Cicely, deputy regional director for public use, Pacific West

Region, National Park Service, accompanied by Dave Uberuaga, superintendent, Mount Rainier National Park; Bill Laitner, superintendent,

Olympic National Park; and William Paleck, superintendent, North

Cascades National Park ............................................................................... 11

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Dickenson, Russ, former director, National Park Service, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 64

Fleck, Rod, city attorney/planner, Forks, WA, prepared statement of ......... 70

Jewell, Sally, trustee, National Parks Conservation Association, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 51

Malmberg, J. Paul, regional director, Washington State Parks, Southwest

Region, prepared statement of ..................................................................... 42

Muldoon, Cicely, deputy regional director for public use, Pacific West

Region, National Park Service, prepared statement of ............................. 14

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 5

(1)

NATIONAL PARKS IN THE PACIFIC

NORTHWEST

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Bellevue, WA.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:12 a.m., at the

Lewis Creek Visitor Center, 5808 Lakemont Boulevard, Bellevue,

WA, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representative Souder.

Also present: Representatives Reichert, Inslee, and Baird.

Staff present: Marc Wheat, staff director and chief counsel; and

Mark Pfundstein, professional staff member.

Mr. SOUDER. Let the meeting come to order. Before I read my

opening statement, let me briefly describe for those who aren’t familiar with our Government Reform Committee what we’re doing

here. Congress is basically structured with authorizing committees.

For the National Parks, it would be the Resources Committee and

National Parks Subcommittee to develop legislation.

Any legislation that is based on the Centennial Act or anything

else would have to move through the Parks Subcommittee and the

Natural Resources Committee. Then the appropriation process decides how to fund that. In the process, the appropriators who often,

I think, are in charge of everything will also do policies with it, but

they have to get a waiver from the Resources Committee.

The Government Reform Committee basically looks at whether

the policies are being implemented the way Congress intended and

the way the money has been spent is the way Congress has intended and is the oversight for all legislation and policy. In the

Government Reform Committee, we have kind of like, for lack of

a better word, three major subcommittees and then a number of

more targeted subcommittees.

The subcommittee I chair on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and

Human Resources has become the primary narcotics committee in

the U.S. Congress because not only do we do oversight, but we also

have authorization on the drug side, and recently the speaker has

assigned other drug policies to our committee, although it’s not

clear whether it should go to the judiciary or to Congress.

So we spend about half our time on narcotics issues, but we also

have very broad jurisdiction in my subcommittee to be able to hold

hearings on different topics.

2

So we have jurisdiction over the Department of Education, the

Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of

Justice, the Department of HUD, as well as all faith-based operations, NPR and so on, and because I swapped Department of Commerce to another committee chairman in our arrangements with

National Parks.

Now, what we do in addition to the regular oversight we do in

our subcommittee, we try and focus on one area where I do a series

of hearings over 2 years and then issue a report.

About 4 years ago, we spent 2 years on the borders and used that

border report then as the foundational document that we used in

our creation of the Homeland Security Committee, which I’m on on

the borders, and the chairman had every Member read that border

report.

The last 2 years we focused in the last Congress on faith-based

and did a series of hearings around the country looking at how that

was being implemented and what the original intents were versus

some of the policy being done.

In this 2-year cycle, we’re looking at our National Parks. We

have had a series of these hearings now in Washington, DC, as

well as at Gettysburg and in Boston. We are going to the Grand

Canyon next month. And we are doing a series of these field hearings.

Whenever we do these oversight hearings, the authorizing committee and the Appropriations Committee and the administration

are never happy. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s Republican or

Democrat, but we were in existence actually before the authorizing

committees, and so every time jurisdiction is challenged, we win,

as was the case in this, and we have been going ahead. But it’s

been a little bit of a slow start because a lot of people didn’t want

us to have our hearings.

But as you can see now with this being our fourth hearing, the

hearings are going ahead full steam, and we’ll be doing about one

a month for the foreseeable future. So I thank you all for participating in this because I can guarantee you that certainly since I’ve

been in Congress and when I was in the staff there hasn’t been this

systematic looking at the National Parks around the country in an

oversight perspective in a long time, because in the day-to-day

business of Congress you are busy dealing with the legislation and

trying to find the funding. And we wanted to have a sweeping look

across the country in each region of the country, so I thank you for

your willingness.

This committee when Republicans took over was primarily noted

for all the investigations of the last administration. It started with

the travel office and running through to the end.

This time we’re probably best known because we like to talk

about the past because Mark McGwire and the baseball people are

up in front of us on steroids, and that was probably the most notable moment in this particular Congress, but that’s what the focus

of this is. It’s oversight to look at the financial policy, long-term

goals, particularly pointing toward the 100th birthday of the National Parks System.

So I thank you for coming. As I mentioned, this is the fourth in

a series of critical hearings. I would also like to welcome my fellow

3

Members of Congress who deeply care about the National Parks

and who have joined me here today.

As I have said at many of the hearings, our American National

Park System is really one of our primary contributions to the world

as a concept. Many countries have National Parks and have preserved their historic areas. No other country, however, has developed the same kind of park system with such a diversity and

breadth and distinctiveness as our system.

Moreover, each park is unique unto itself. The majesty of Mt.

Rainier is different than the breathtaking volcanoes of Hawaii,

which are different from the historically and emotionally significant sites of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Although each

site is an exceptional example of history and natural beauty, all

park service units share one unfortunate commonality: funding

pressure.

As operations and maintenance, for example, demand more and

more of the Park Service budget, the quality of the Park Service

is sure to deteriorate. In many areas, we have already seen a decrease in hours of operation, decline of services and the deterioration of facilities. The pressure on the Park Service affects its ability

to conserve and protect the environment, provide recreational opportunities and educate the public.

The parks of the Pacific Northwest contain some of the most

magnificent vistas, prime hiking and mountain climbing opportunities and ecologically diverse zones in the Park Service. If these

parks are to remain, we must examine the parks of this region, discuss their situations and work to provide solutions so that future

generations can enjoy what we have today.

I am pleased to be joined today by several Members of Congress,

all of whom have a deep and abiding love of the parks and the

Park Service.

First, Congressman Brian Baird joins us today. He and I co-chair

the National Parks Caucus in the House. He also was instrumental

in the creation of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park.

I would also like to welcome Congressmen Jay Inslee, Dave

Reichert, and I know Rick Larsen will be here later because he told

me he was coming.

These gentlemen have demonstrated their commitment to the

National Parks not only by their presence here today, but also

through their efforts in Congress to make a better Park Service.

I would also like to welcome our witnesses. Our first panel consists of Cicely Muldoon, Deputy Regional Director for Public Use,

Pacific West Region. Director Muldoon will be testifying on behalf

of the Park Service. She will be joined during the question period

by Dave Uberuaga, Superintendent, Mount Rainier National Park;

Bill Laitner, Superintendent, Olympic National Park; and William

Paleck, Superintendent, North Cascades National Park.

Our second panel will be Sally Jewell, trustee of the National

Parks Conservation Association; Russ Dickenson, the former director of National Park Service from 1980–1985; Ron Fleck, city attorney/planner of Forks, WA; Rex Derr, director of the Washington

State Parks; and Tim Wood, director of the Oregon State Parks. We

welcome you all.

4

I would now like to yield to Congressman Inslee for an opening

statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

5

6

Mr. INSLEE. Well, thank you. I really appreciate Chairman

Souder coming here, and I’m sorry you didn’t make it to any Washington National Parks this summer; hopefully next summer. We’ll

work on you in that regard.

It goes without saying we’re talking about the crown jewels of

America here today, and I know everybody in this room cares deeply about it.

Just as a personal note, one of the reasons I care so deeply is

my family goes back to the National Parks with my mom and dad

who worked with the SCA doing re-vegetation work up in the damaged alpine meadows up in Mt. Rainier National Park in the late

60’s and early 70’s. And we saw what can happen to our parks as

far as degradation when we don’t care for them and the great work

that we can do if we can get the resources to get it done. And right

now those resources are greatly in jeopardy.

And just as a matter of a personal note, I will put in the record,

Mr. Chair, if I can, a little picture of Sahalie Peek and Hidden

Lake that I took a couple of weeks ago on a great hike.

But I just want to note, and I will hand this around, this shows

to the right of this a place, Cascade Pass, and it’s an incredible

spot. And it was actually trampled about 20 years ago by all of us

who loved it to death. And the people at North Cascades National

Park with their own resources and some volunteers did an incredible job managing that resource so that now when you go up there,

you see alpine meadows, and you can walk in sort of a defined area

on occasion. And it was just an indication to me of the great work

that people have been doing when they get the resources. And my

complements to all the folks who worked on that project.

But I want to note it’s not just budgetary pressures we have to

talk about, and I will make a mention about that in a minute, but

there are two real threats to the National Parks that are in a larger environment that go beyond just our National Park policy.

One of those is the changes in the climate that affects the entire

ecosystem in our national parks. If you go up—in fact, if you look

at this picture here, there’s a picture of Sahale Glacier. Sahale Glacier is 1 of 117 glaciers in the North Cascades National Park that

are shrinking. All the glaciers are shrinking. Four of them have actually disappeared. We have four glaciers that were there when I

was born and have disappeared. Glacier National Park will not

have glaciers in Glacier National Park in 75 years if trends continue.

We have a massive change in our climatic system that has created change in not only the glaciers, but the biospheres in our National Parks. And I know that because I think it’s important every

chance we get to talk about this threat to the world that we grew

up in in America.

I was in Denali Park a few years when they talked about the

moving tree line which is moving up which has the threat that

eventually some of those alpine meadows that I grew up with may

not be there in 100, 200 years if the tree line continues to move

up.

Congress has been willfully and totally AWOL dealing with this

issue. And no matter what we do voluntarily, unless we deal with

global warming, our National Parks are going to be significantly diVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:32 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27380.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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minished from the alpine meadow jewels that we enjoy in Washington in the Olympics, Mt. Rainier and North Cascades Park.

The second threat that’s sort of epidemic, and that is that we are

told there is a grassroots circulation in the bowels of the Department of Interior that in a major way would diminish our commitment to the long-term commitment to keep our parks in a pristine

and natural condition.

We’re told that a draft is circulating that would essentially redefine what the word impairment is, which would say you can go

ahead and impair our parks if it’s just on a temporary basis. That

just doesn’t cut it. Jet skis, as my friend Brian Baird suggested,

don’t belong in Crater Lake National Parks, although, it would be

intriguing to see them go around the little island there.

This is a major threat to the very fundamental mission of the

National Park system, and we need for that memo to never see the

light of the day, that it is stopped before it hits the public because

I can say unequivocally that the consensus view of the people I represent want to see National Parks for several generations down the

road, not just for the next 2 years’ potential profitmaking enterprises in our National Parks.

You know, we used to have a golf course at Paradise National

Park, but it really wasn’t the right thing at the right place, and we

want to strangle that bad idea.

The third issue, and I will just make one comment, and I’m looking forward to hearing from the panels about this, we do not want

to get ultimately into financing National Parks with a bake sale

situation. And there is a bill that is one potential approach to this

situation. But we have to have a finer way to pay for the National

Parks. If we do not have one of the tax cuts go through for people

who earn over $500,000 a year, if we just reduce that by one fifth

so the people who earn over half million dollars a year have one

fifth less of the tax cuts than they have, you would totally wipe out

the backlog of the National Park. And we need to find a bipartisan

way to pay for this, and I hope we can do that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

We’re here in the home area of Congressman Reichert.

Mr. REICHERT. Well, welcome everyone and thank you for being

here this morning. And I would like to thank the panel for being

here, and we look forward to your testimony. I certainly thank

Congressman Souder for being here and holding this in this area

and having an opportunity for all of us here at the local area to

be involved in this and listen to the discussion and have an opportunity to ask questions that we’re all interested in hearing the answers to.

I agree with my colleague, Congressman Inslee, that we do have

to find some solutions here to protect our environment. And I’m the

new kid on the block, so I have some different ideas and some hope

that, as you see, we have a panel here, we have Democrats and Republicans, so this isn’t about a party issue. This is about an issue

for our community. And we all have to take a part in this and all

have to find a solution.

One of the solutions put forward by Congressman Souder is a bill

that would allow people to deduct—check a box on their income tax

8

to donate money, to have money withdrawn to put toward taking

care of our National Parks and helping with the maintenance of

our National Parks. I’m a co-sponsor on that bill, and I’m hoping

that goes forward.

Right now the current status of that legislation, it’s been referred

to the House Resources Committee, and it’s just one of the ideas

put forth. There were several ideas that are still to come as we

work on trying to find ways to fund this effort.

One of the other things that we’ve done is we’ve been able to ac- quire $1.63 million which has allowed us to buy an additional section of property on the south side of Mt. Rainier, which is the

Carter River Valley area, which many of you might be familiar

with. And that’s an area that everybody knows has had some flooding issues. So we were excited about that when we heard that we

were able to acquire the funding to purchase that property.

So this is a great opportunity really, I think, for all of us to come

together to learn a lot more about our community, our national

parks and to begin to really look at solutions and protect this environment.

I have three children and now six grandchildren, and I would

like them to enjoy the park systems as much as I have during my

54 years here in the Northwest. So I also recall a time when I used

to have time to hike in the mountains, and maybe some of you

have been to Lake Dorothy recently, but back a few years ago hikes

to Lake Dorothy from the Snoqualmie/Stevens Pass side, it was

really, really well traveled, and at one point they had to cut the

trail off to block the road so the people had to hike in further to

reduce the amount of traffic that was going up to Lake Dorothy.

So we have a lot of work to do. I’m pleased to be here and have

an opportunity to participate and, again, thank all of you for being

here, and we look forward to the witnesses’ testimony.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Mr. Baird.

Mr. BAIRD. I want to echo the thanks to Chairman Souder who

has been just a champion of the parks. He’s too modest to mention

it, but Mark has a goal, which is nearly achieved, of visiting every

single National Park in the system, something I envy, having loved

the parks as much as I do.

And Mark and I were proud to start the National Parks Caucus

within the Congress and, believe it or not, there are caucuses for

almost everything you can imagine, but there has never been a National Parks Caucus even though so many of us cherish the parks.

I want to thank all of you, the folks here in the audience and

particularly our witnesses, the superintendents, not so much for

being here today, but for what you do every single day to preserve

this magnificent treasure that we’ve been granted for generations

to come. And we’re grateful for your work.

Jay mentioned his family connection. My father was a seasonal

park ranger at Colorado National Monument. Those hats are very

familiar. One sat on our dining room table almost every night.

I note also Chip Jenkins is here. He’s the superintendent of

America’s newest national park, Lewis and Clark National Park.

And I’m pleased for the chairman’s support and our Senators and

Maria Cantwell in particular who were able to pass that. And I inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:32 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27380.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
9

vite you all to visit the mouth of the Columbia River and see where

Lewis and Clark hit the Pacific Ocean on the Washington side as

well as on the Oregon side. We’re grateful for that.

Some years ago I tried to ask myself what is it that makes our

country so unique and special? And if we have newcomers to our

Nation, what values do you want to instill them with? And as we

try to export our highest values to the world, what would those be?

And after a great deal of thought and a lot of study, two things

came to me that I think are so quintessentially part of our culture

that have been gifts to the whole world, and they are the Bill of

Rights and our National Park system.

If I had to say I had only two things to pass on, I mean, there’s

jazz and baseball and lots of other stuff, but the Bill of Rights and

the National Parks are profoundly important to me and to all of us

I think.

One of my concerns is I think they are both under some assault

today, but particularly the National Parks. We face a multibillion

dollar infrastructure backlog, and we don’t have adequate personnel to staff the parks the way many of us believe they should be

staffed.

And as a result, we have seen curtailment of the naturalist programs that many of us recall as young people, as children. Remember taking your kids to the ranger? Many of us are of that age

where we remember. We were kids, too. But at one point taking

our kids to hear the ranger talk and learning about the natural

wildlife and the history of the area.

Those have been curtailed. Parks are closing. They are not provided needed maintenance. And we’re building a backlog on this

treasure that we’ve been given, a backlog of maintenance and current and seasonal staffing. So I think we must address that. So I

will intend, I will say, to ask some pretty tough questions today.

And I had the experience back in January of being concerned

about whether we would have resources for our returning veterans

from Iraq. I was convinced we wouldn’t. I spoke with people who

worked for the VA at the time, and they were pretty much under

orders not to tell the truth. And they were told, ‘‘Tell anybody who

asks that we have adequate resources to meet the needs of our veterans.’’

Well, it turns out we were more than $11⁄2 billion short, and so

I’m aware that any government official right now faces a difficult

challenge, and I will not jeopardize the careers of these individuals

because they are outstanding public servants. But it is of great

concern——

Mr. SOUDER. There is a sigh of relief.

Mr. BAIRD. But I contextualized that because I have personal experience of seeing valuable, valiant public servants being put in a

difficult position of being given a mandated admission that they

passionately believe in, and yet not getting adequate resources to

fulfill that mission, but having overt or implicit instructions that

if they raise those alarms, the very career that they so cherish

could be in jeopardy.

So I will not try to jeopardize any of these folks, but I will ask

them very pointed questions about how many naturalists are you

10

able to provide right now, what kind of maintenance backlogs do

you have, etc.

And I will just close, I suppose, by echoing my friend Mr. Inslee’s

comments. I read with, I wouldn’t say horror, but I would say outrage and indignation the reports about the Hoffman memo. In my

judgment, this fellow Hoffman may be the most dangerous man in

the United States of America today, and I aim to do absolutely everything I can to stop his rewrite of the mission of the National

Parks.

And so I thank Chairman Souder for holding this hearing and

look forward to some very instructive and informative comments

from our distinguished guests.

Mr. SOUDER. I just want the people here from Washington to

know that in the other Washington we also know that Brian Baird

is one of the most shy, retiring Members on the Democratic side

and is not known to speak out in many cases.

And this is a very awkward process that we’re all going through,

and I want to acknowledge this at the beginning of this hearing because it is hard in the present atmosphere of Washington, quite

frankly, to do anything in a bipartisan way.

And one of our huge challenges with the National Park Service

is not to have it get in a crossfire of what is a very evenly divided

but steadily Republican tilt country right now, and that if we can’t

build bipartisan support for the National Park Service and hold

that through this, it will suffer with everything else that gets

caught in the cross fire.

And it’s very difficult because we have many things upon which

we disagree, but we’re trying to figure out how we can work this

through. It’s been very important, as you will see as I go through

the committee rules here, and I want to say this for the record,

that without Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, allowing us to proceed with these hearings even when

he’s not here, you can’t do this. There aren’t very many committees

in Congress that can work on, basically, a unanimous consent

basis.

Furthermore, the chairman of the committee, Tom Davis, along

with the ranking member, Henry Waxman, have given, in effect, a

budget that we can set up a field hearing, pay to travel, pay the

stenographers to do this in a bipartisan way, which has been very

important, and I appreciate that.

It’s also not easy to get committees to get clearance to allow

other committee members to appear at the hearing and participate

as full committee members, as we’re doing with the Washington

delegation today.

So first I ask for consent that all Members have 5 days to submit

written statements and questions for the hearing record and any

answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered. And I ask

for consent that all Members present be permitted to participate in

the hearing and without objection, it is so ordered.

The technical thing that I just did, since I’m the only member of

the committee, I couldn’t say have a voice vote, so I said without

objection it is so ordered, which means that theoretically one of the

11

Democrats could object later, but we’ve had prior sign off. But that

means now everybody can participate in the hearing.

Our first panel is composed of——

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for that in

all seriousness. It would have been very easy for the chairman or

others to say either, A, you cannot have the hearings or, B, you can

have them, but you can only invite Members.

And we are certainly grateful, caring as we do for the parks but

not privileged enough to serve on that committee, we’re grateful for

your indulgence in allowing us to be here.

Mr. SOUDER. Our first panel is composed of Cicely Muldoon, deputy regional director for Public Use, Pacific West Region; David

Uberuaga, superintendent of Mt. Rainier; Bill Laitner, superintendent of Olympic; and William Paleck, superintendent of North Cascades National Park, who are not official witnesses, but may be

able to answer questions.

Now, as an oversight committee, it’s a standard practice to ask

all those who testify to do so under oath.

I appreciate that what wasn’t known in our previous hearing was

that Mark McGwire ducked the subpoena for 3 days because he

knew that if he came and testified under oath, he could be prosecuted for perjury as Rafael Palmeiro is finding out right now. The

question is did he answer the questions when he was under

steroids or not, and the latest we have is we still don’t know. We’re

trying to sort that out because it appears he may have been.

Now presumably, first off, I’m not going to ask any steroid questions. Second, if you will stand, each stand and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

Ms. Muldoon, we’ll have you speak, and then everybody else can

field questions.

STATEMENT OF CICELY MULDOON, DEPUTY REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR PUBLIC USE, PACIFIC WEST REGION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY DAVE

UBERUAGA, SUPERINTENDENT, MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL

PARK; BILL LAITNER, SUPERINTENDENT, OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK; AND WILLIAM PALECK, SUPERINTENDENT,

NORTH CASCADES NATIONAL PARK

Ms. MULDOON. OK. Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, Congressmen, good morning and thank you for

the opportunity to appear today at this oversight hearing on issues

facing the National Park Service in the Pacific Northwest. Thank

you, too, for your continuing support of Congress for parks here in

the Northwest and throughout the National Park System. It’s really terrific to have you all out here and have such a good showing

from the State.

As requested by the committee, our testimony today highlights

activities and issues related to maintenance, funding, homeland security, partnerships and environmental stewardship. And I know

how Congressman Reichert feels about being the new kid on the

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block, so I’m very pleased to have my colleagues from the big three

parks here today to join me in the questions.

So to begin, I would like to speak to the Pacific West Region,

itself, and how we’re organized. The Pacific West includes 58 parks

in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii and the

heart of the Pacific. Now, this testimony is specific to the parks in

western Washington and northwestern Oregon, which we call the

North Coast and Cascades Network. This network includes Olympic, North Cascades, Mt. Rainier, San Juan Island, Lewis and

Clark, Klondike Gold Rush, Ross Lake, Lake Chelan, Fort Vancouver and Ebey’s Landing.

The networks of parks is a concept born of the Natural Resource

Challenge, and they work collaboratively to share staff, training

and expertise in all aspects of park operations. So the large parks

do a lot of the supporting both of each other and small parks in

every network across the region.

I would like to highlight a few of the projects in the Northwest

parks that speak to funding sources, the maintenance and visitor

services and homeland security. Annual operational funds, of

course, are fundamental to our ability to keep day-to-day operations running, and we deeply appreciate the increases in operating funds Congress provided to the National Parks in both fiscal

year 2005 and upcoming in fiscal year 2006. Other annual operational funding is dedicated to cyclic maintenance needs and repair

and rehabilitation projects.

And for major construction projects, our parks have appropriated

construction funds, recreation fees and contributions from other

sources. The Transportation Equity Act also provides a critical

source of infrastructure funding, authorizing more than $1 billion

in funding for park roads over the next 5 years.

So as some examples, locally North Cascades has repaired or replaced aging infrastructure, campgrounds, trails, power lines,

bridges, roads and visitor facilities using line-item construction

funds, emergency storm damage moneys, rehabilitation funds, user

fees and mitigation funds that total more than $7 million in recent

years.

With 20 miles of boundary shared with Canada, North Cascades

also is a porous avenue for illegal aliens and drug trafficking across

the border. The budget increase from Congress in fiscal year 2004

has been used to add park rangers so that we’re better equipped

to assist with the Department of Homeland Security in securing

our borders and protecting both park visitors and park resources.

At Olympic, the range of improvements include picnic tables and

campfire grills, improved roads and back country trails, accessible

restrooms and seismic retrofits. Olympic received an operating

budget increase of 4 percent for fiscal year 2005 which has enabled

the park to hire additional seasonal employees and include visitor

services.

And finally, in the last 2 years at Mt. Rainier, the National Park

Services has completed four major construction projects, and two

other multi-year construction projects are about to begin—rebuilding the Jackson Visitor Center and rehabilitating the Paradise Inn.

I see I’m out of time.

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Mr. SOUDER. In the field hearings, we are a little more generous

with the 5-minute clock. We want to make sure we hear what you

have to say.

Ms. MULDOON. Thank you for that. I don’t have far to go.

Another area in which Northwest park work extensively is in

partnerships, and the national parks in Washington State have a

long history of working with their neighboring national forests.

They share offices and visitor orientation facilities. We share resources for wildland firefighting and emergency law enforcement

response.

The newly designated Lewis and Clark National Historic Park is

a leading national example in Federal/State collaboration with

Washington, Oregon and the National Park Service working in concert to preserve the sites important to this great story on both sides

of the Columbia.

Seattle City Light uses runoff from North Cascades to produce 25 percent of Seattle’s electricity. This utility spent $10.7 million

to build the park’s new Environmental Learning Center which

opened this past July. The North Cascades Institute, a non-profit

park partner for nearly 20 years, operates and maintains this facility.

And finally I would like to touch on environmental stewardship

in the Northwest. Addressing threats to the natural ecosystems is,

of course, one of the greatest challenges we have in the parks in

the Northwest, and it’s an area where we’re beginning to see some

successes.

I think Olympic might be our poster child as the site of one of

the Nation’s most critical restoration products, removal of two

dams on the Elwha. This will be the largest dam removal effort in

the Nation to date and I believe the second largest restoration

project in the National Park System.

We expect this project to result in restoration of salmon and

steelhead habitat and populations which will benefit the Elwha

tribe and the local communities and restore a healthy ecosystem.

Invasive species are a critical threat in the Northwest and

throughout the Nation, and the Northwest parks are actively engaged in working with public and private partners to combat

invasive species, particularly plant species, throughout the region.

So with that, Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement, and

we will be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Muldoon follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your testimony. Tell Jon Jarvis I

said hi. I very much appreciated that when he was superintendent

and we had a problem with our car, I still remember him running

alongside the car trying to hear what was wrong with it. My wife

was not going to go down. Brian was telling me about—I’m not a

climber. He’s a climber. We were in a car. But my wife wasn’t

going to go down the mountain with me in that car. So he saved

us at that time, and I appreciate that.

I listened to a number of the things that were proposals back

then now being implemented. If I could ask, I remember I believe

it was 2001 when I was at Olympic when this river dam project

was about to be started. Has this been moved back? When was the

original target?

Mr. LAITNER. Sir, I would be happy to. First of all, thank you for

the invitation to be here. We appreciate the opportunity to come

before Congress. Quite frankly, though, I wish we were on a trail

with you this afternoon rather than sitting here.

The Elwha River restoration project is the second largest project

that the National Park Service has ever undertaken. Right now the

current schedule is to begin dam deconstruction in late 2008.

Because there are 22 million cubic yards of silt behind the dams,

we need to make sure that the drinking water for Port Angeles and

the industrial water for Port Angeles remains clean. So the National Park Service is in the process with the city of building a municipal water treatment plant and industrial water treatment

plant.

We’re working with the tribe to construct a new fish hatchery so

that when this habitat opens up, we can restock the area. We’re

working with the tribe to extend the levy for flood protection.

We’re working with neighbors outside of the park on the Elwha

River to insure that their properties don’t become flooded. And we

are in the process of building a greenhouse to re-vegetate that area

with many millions of plants.

So all of those things need to take place prior to dam

deconstruction. But we’re, with our many partners, moving fully

ahead to open up 74 miles of habitat for salmon and steelhead that

is now closed because of two dams.

Mr. SOUDER. I would like to look at this, this is kind of a mini

case here for a second, and how we look at questions like backlog.

Has that been—it’s hard for us to tell what is a wish list, what is

a backlog, what is in need of imminent repair. Has that been

counted in the backlog up until now?

Mr. LAITNER. Actually, I don’t believe that has been included in

the backlog. Parks are at different stages of determining what their

backlogs are.

Olympic National Park this summer had a contract team come

in and do what is called a Comprehensive Condition Analysis of

our front country facilities. What do your buildings look like? What

repairs do you need? What do your utility systems looks like? What

repairs do they need?

And the results of that team coming in are not yet into the computerized system, so it appears for Olympic, for example, that our

number is $23 million, which is quite a lot lower than Mt. Rainier’s. It doesn’t mean that Olympic’s facilities are in much better

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condition than Mt. Rainier’s. It simply means that our needs have

not yet been entered into this national computerized data base.

Mr. SOUDER. When you said that you are in the process of working with the Indian nations, with the community of Port Angeles,

all of which were critical before that project was ever going to be

undertaken, will there be funds outside the Park Service, say,

through the Department of Interior that go to the Indian nation,

through the Department of Energy or water resources or wherever

the money might come from to Port Angeles in addition to the Park

Service or is this going to go through the Park Service budget.

Mr. LAITNER. Most of the money comes through the Park Service

budget. However, especially in the field of research, we are looking

to many partners. A National Science Foundation Grant just went

to Peninsula College in Port Angeles and to Western Washington

University in Bellingham for $1 million to study the effects of dam

removal.

I mean, what a great opportunity to look at an area that was

pristine, two dams went in, almost 80 years went by with nothing

else happening, two dams are going to come out, and be able to

look at the changes.

We’re looking for a lot of private support for that part of it. There

are also some moneys from the tribe and some from the city, but

the bulk of the funds come through the National Park Service.

Mr. SOUDER. So when we look at a park budget, and taking

Olympic in particular here as an example, you are going to have

a backlog figure, you are going to have a general operations figure,

and then something like this would be an additional project.

Mr. LAITNER. Right. It’s in the portion of the budget that is the

line-item construction, and that money to do all those things that

I mentioned comes through that funding source.

Mr. SOUDER. And if the region is giving—unlike most discretionary funds, at least the National Park Service got an increase,

it’s right around 3 percent or thereabouts, so in a region then—

maybe, Ms. Muldoon, you can address this question.

If there is a project that is a new project, and that project presumably is going to be, although, it’s out in 2008, is going to take

money, do you see this coming out of the operations or kind of tackle the backlog? How do you make a priority decision?

Ms. MULDOON. A project like the Elwha would never come out

of operations. It’s too big of a one-time shot. That typically in our

world comes out of the line-item construction funds. Anything that

is over $500,000, a project of that size competes nationally with

other line-items.

Mr. SOUDER. If I may interrupt you for just a second then, if you

are saying you get it out of the line-item construction, is it Congress then that is determining whether something goes to line-item

construction or NPS? Because if you have $100, let’s just say it was

$100 in the total budget, and you have a backlog in your general

operations, 3 percent doesn’t even cover—a 3 percent increase

means you have lost ground in staffing. So that section of the budget is losing ground.

How do you make a decision and who makes the decision? Is it

made at the national, at the regional or the park level as to, yes,

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we’re going to put this money in new construction, which means

we’re going to be this much extra short?

We all know what the numbers are. There’s no way to handle the

pensions, health care, the salaries, under the existing structure,

and the backlog isn’t going down. So the question is what do you

do with the projects, which I don’t want to kill new projects, so the

question is how are you—where does this money come from and

who is making that decision?

Ms. MULDOON. The full answer for the record on that one, I

would defer to my colleagues. My understanding is that for much

of the line-item construction funding in particular, the Park Service

sets priorities and submits them to Congress, and Congress assigns

those priorities and line-items and more parks.

Mr. SOUDER. For parks, which I’m for. We’re the elected officials.

It’s just I’m wondering then how that ripples into the system. If

there’s an earmark in your area that comes through, does this

come out of your other budget then.

Ms. MULDOON. If there’s an earmark in line-item construction, it

just bumps down our existing priority list for line-item construction

which is set regionally and then also set nationally. Parks compete

for those projects. So the Park Service has a standing priority list

for construction, and earmarks are inserted in that priority list, so

it just bumps them down through the years.

Mr. SOUDER. I will followup on that question. I mean, the total

budget for the parks or anything else, in other words, if we earmark it for that, if we earmark it in highways, that total budget

doesn’t change? It comes out of that, and presumably earmarks are

then assigned by region or something by the Park Service? It

doesn’t mean it necessarily goes up to that region.

That’s what Brian was asking, and I’m curious, too, in relation

to the same question, what happens precisely when something gets

earmarked, how does that ripple through in the budget and what

does it do?

Does it mean that what I understood you to say is it comes out

of the Pacific West Region, it comes out of the zone marked construction, so there’s less other, but somebody also made the decision to keep a certain amount of dollars of construction versus operation and backlog?

Ms. MULDOON. That’s right. You know, I’m going to defer to Dave

Uberuaga on this one.

Mr. UBERUAGA. I will try that. So we have distinct pockets of

money, if you will. Line-item construction is a stand-alone in the

Park Service appropriation. And each park has needs of projects

that are over $500,000 prioritized at a park level that are

prioritized and compete on a regional level and then as well on a

sophisticated scoring system based on needs, safety and visitor access, how many people are receiving the benefit from that and how

serious of a maintenance backlog maybe even that is involved in

repairing this facility.

So those priorities within the line-item construction are in that

category of that budget. And sometimes we’ve had as much as $400

million in line-item construction, sometimes it’s as low as $150 million, but in that range depending on the appropriators.

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So in the case, I will give an example, Sunrise Lodge at Mt.

Rainier was scheduled on the Park Service’s and Mt. Rainier’s

schedule for funding in 2008. That would have been on the table

for the appropriation 2008. Based on the priorities that are coming

in, something was inserted, earmarked, if you will, in 2004 or 2005

that bumped all projects that were below it, maybe bumped them

down in a priority, and finally that particular project was rolled to

the next year. So Sunrise is going to be in fiscal year 2009 in this

year’s schedule.

It doesn’t mean it’s off the table. It just means if there have been

any inserted, then it would have a ripple effect through the whole

priority. But line-item construction is kind of self contained and the

appropriators range depending on funds available.

Mr. SOUDER. And my impression, and I will ask Mr. Dickenson

who has had expertise at the Federal level for years, too, is that

then in reality, the Park Service will make a request that’s basically—I mean, you have this ongoing kind of project list that really

you are working out.

How far would you say, if you have new proposals, are you now

proposing out to 2012?

Mr. UBERUAGA. We have a rolling 5-year program.

Mr. SOUDER. So 2010 is the farthest out you are. So if you have

new things, you are kicking it in to 2012 now. And then Congress,

when we put earmarks in, we bump a certain amount of that back,

and those presumably you make requests up to the regional office,

the regional office then kicks them up to the Park Service and reworks it coming over to Congress and then Congress tinkers with

it. Is that the general process?

Ms. MULDOON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. So when we earmark, it doesn’t necessarily change

regions, and it doesn’t necessarily change accounts. It just alters

the year structure within those accounts for everything else in that

region.

Can the regional director reshuffle if he wants to keep certain

things or do you have the flexibility or once you have this kind of

long-term plan, how locked down is that plan?

Ms. MULDOON. The regional director has some discretion to reshuffle, but generally line-item construction gets set as a region,

and then it moves on to a service wide priority setting committee,

so then those priorities are set on a service wide basis. So our boss

couldn’t take a Pacific West project and put it over on a Southeast

project that has already been put on.

Mr. SOUDER. But he could switch it around in the Pacific West

or is that——

Mr. UBERUAGA. He has that discretion.

Mr. PALECK. I think it’s 10 percent, and then we re-program it,

request to re-program it.

Mr. SOUDER. Particularly when you have cooperative agreements, I would assume that puts some pressure on it as well because if Port Angeles and Indian nations said, ‘‘OK. We have our

money. We can’t go two more years or we are going to lose it,’’ you

would be able to—do you have a process to, in addition to 10 percent, do a request that would be—I mean, is that done or is that

considered?

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Mr. UBERUAGA. Well, if I understand it correctly, in the evaluation of each project, there are a number of scoring factors. So partnership is a scoring factor, you know. If it’s a life/safety/health

issue, that scores more. So all of the projects are ranked, and so

there is a scoring in that relationship.

So if something does come up, and then it’s re-scored, you can

look at that and move it up in priority, and the regional director

has that discretion.

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses. Just to make sure I understand, let’s suppose theoretically

your region has $1 billion just for a nice round number.

Mr. PALECK. Sure.

Mr. BAIRD. It’s a nice round number. And you decide we’re going

to try to get money for a particular project that we find important.

It doesn’t sound like you have actually added money to your region.

It sounds like to me what we have done is we have forced you to

take that money that we just patted ourselves on the back be earmarked and moved that higher up the priority list, so it would

mean other things got knocked back. Is that correct?

Ms. MULDOON. That’s correct.

Mr. BAIRD. We should know that when it’s being earmarked.

Mr. UBERUAGA. You can add funds to the earmark.

Mr. BAIRD. That’s a helpful suggestion. I would be remiss, by the

way, if I didn’t also acknowledge the presence of the NPCA. The

National Parks Conservation Association has been a stalwart supporter of the parks, and I am grateful for their presence. I also

want to mention our wonderful Fort Vancouver. We should acknowledge that and appreciate that, and Tracy Fortnum does a

fantastic job.

We have, coincidentally, a visitor center project down there

which we would like to see funded. For some people who are 40

years old now and growing, the use of that park would warrant

some funds for that.

You mentioned earlier the field had $1 billion in National Parks

over 5 years. Any sense off the top of your head? $1 billion sounds

like a lot of money, but I’m wondering any sense of the total number of road miles of international parks, even a rough approximation, or in your own just for example?

Mr. UBERUAGA. At Mt. Rainier, I have 88 miles of paved road,

all national historic landmark designated road. So there are cultural roadways as well as the infrastructure that ties all of those

together. And I have seen contracts recently from $1 million a mile

to $2 million a mile even in the State here in terms of what the

projects cost.

Mr. BAIRD. Is that for maintenance or——

Mr. UBERUAGA. That would be for reconstruction and rehabilitation of the roadway. So in the bill, those are primarily for reconstruction, rehabilitation of our roadways. At Mt. Rainier, we have

seven projects in the package there, and they are all $5 to $7 million each over the next 5 years.

And so that impact in our case would be about $75 million in

maintenance backlog currently in the 5-year program for our roads

at Mt. Rainier.

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Mr. BAIRD. The reason I ask that is because one of the things I

found back there is you can have a number that sounds pretty big,

like $1 billion nationwide, and then when you start breaking it out

to where the demands are on it, you realize it’s not big at all.

So if you have 88 miles of road, and it takes $1 million to refurbish a mile of road, and this is difficult terrain, you have all kinds

of sensitivities, sometimes shifting landscape, rock falls, creek passages, etc., so you say here’s Mt. Rainier, $1 million a mile, 88

miles in one park alone.

If you look at a park like Yellowstone or Yosemite, you pretty

quickly add on, and you realize that’s how we get to these shortfalls when we talk about billions of dollars in shortfalls. You just

simply do the math, and you realize that what sounds like a big

number.

And it’s fun, I mean, as a politician or administration, you can

pat yourself on the back and say, ‘‘By God, we have $1 billion in

this bill,’’ and everybody says, ‘‘Oh, my goodness, $1 billion is a lot

of money.’’ And then you start piecing it out, and you realize it’s

a lot, but it’s not nearly a lot enough.

Mr. SOUDER. May I make a point for the record that official testimony says correctly that there was a 27 percent increase since the

last highway transportation bill. The last highway transportation

bill was 6 years ago which means just basic inflation would have

taken about 24 percent of that. So it’s really at most a 3-percent

increase assuming the highway costs didn’t go up at a faster rate

than general inflation, which it would, and that’s part of the problem with the numbers.

Mr. BAIRD. Exactly, and that’s part of the reason that Mr. Souder

and I have responded is in recognition of that. And our goal is by

the 100th anniversary, we can eliminate this backlog with the help

of voluntary largely contributions from our taxpayers.

Now, on a similar kind of—I’m going to pursue this issue of

maintenance, and over the last number of years, I’m going to ask

each, if I may, just give me your best assessment of what has happened here to the systems in terms of trail maintenance? How

many miles of trail have you been able to improve? Are there trails

that you have closed down or are not maintaining and letting them

sort of survive as they will under the rigors of human transport

and nature?

Mr. Paleck, let’s start with you.

Mr. PALECK. Thank you, Mr. Baird. North Cascades National

Park Service complex has 398 miles of trail. As you may recall,

there was a devastating flood in October 2003, and most of our attention shifted from routine maintenance to replacing major bridge

structures, replacing entire sections of trail that were lost in the

flood.

In fiscal year 2005, we received $689,500 for emergency storm

damage. The year before, it was $668,800. Most of that money,

frankly, went to trail repairs and major bridge structure repairs.

And I’m pleased to report that by the end of this fall, we’ll have

all those major trail structures replaced. There was also damage to

campgrounds and roads, but the road money comes from separate

accounts.

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The challenge of maintaining 398 miles of trail with a limited

and shrinking staff in a place that grows vegetation quite profusely

is a real challenge. Happily we have a very skilled crew. Also we

rely on the efforts of volunteers that help us. The Pacific Crest

Trail, for example, goes through a portion of the park, and we rely

on PCA volunteers.

To say that we’re keeping all 398 miles of trail in a constantly

well-maintained condition would not be accurate. So we make decisions based on popularity of the trails and the conditions as we encounter them.

Mr. BAIRD. I appreciate that. One of the reasons I ask the question is I’ve have constituents recently come tell me they’ve been

hiking on the trail system in the park with their family, and the

trails were basically gone, and they had to turn back both for safety concerns and for fear they might get lost because it was just

gone.

Mr. Uberuaga.

Mr. UBERUAGA. Thank you. In Mt. Rainier, we have 228 miles

of maintained trail, and we have almost another 100 miles of nonmaintained trail, just the end of the road in some cases that it’s

noted in the trip planning as well.

We have relied on our fee demonstration funding to maintain our

trails. We have based it on really three trail positions. The rest of

them are relying on project dollars each year to see what project

dollars we get for what trails we’ll be able to open and maintain.

We have the supervisor of our trails who has been at Mt. Rainier

40 years. He takes exceptional pride in every linear foot of that

trail, every culvert. You can ask him about every foot bridge. And

the crew and its dedication, to me, has made the trail system what

it is today and how it’s maintained. It’s their dedication. It’s their

pride. They can’t go home until that segment is done.

We’ve had a tremendous amount of volunteers. The most common volunteer effort at Mt. Rainier is for companies, whether it’s

Unilever or K-Mart or in this we’ve had Boeing Co. quite often

come in with crews to help facilitate our trail maintenance

throughout the park.

On a couple of occasions, and I could speak to it myself coming

up to a trail this last year with a river crossing, actually a small

stream crossing, and what we have done over the years is look at

rather than an extensive bridge across that line-item, we put what

we call a stringer or a log bridge, and in those cases some of those

log bridges can be knocked out one or two times, three times a

year.

And with our regular patrols, a crew may not be out for 3 or 4

days before they find the log has been removed and they have to

replace it.

So in general our trail crews rely on project dollars specifically

for trail bridges, trail tread and erosion and have done an outstanding job. But every year we are not sure if we are going to get

the money to do that. And just the regular season opening of fallen

timber across trails is monumental. We survived the flooding with

about $140,000 in back country trail damage that did not specifically fund—we did not get any money specifically to overcome that

deficit, but the trail crew through their ingenuity and some reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:32 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27380.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sources around the park took care of those deficits just this last

summer and during the winter as well.

So that would be my comments on our trail system.

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you.

Mr. LAITNER. Olympic National Park has approximately 600

miles of trails that range from trails on the Pacific Coast to trails

through the Rain Forest and trails in the high country. In 1998

and 1999, the Pacific Northwest before I got here was a very

strange winter. It would snow, and then it would rain, and then

it would snow and then it would rain.

And much of that snow accumulated on bridges, and it wasn’t

just snow, it was ice. Normally the snow will come on the bridges,

it will get to a certain point, and that’s as much snow as you can

get on there. Well, in that year several bridges collapsed. It took

us from early 1999 until approximately the middle of 2003 to fix

those bridges.

I remember talking with the trail crew, and we were kind of getting the feeling like we were getting ahead, we were real proud of

flying in two major bridges that were over 100 feet long, and then

in the fall of 2003, there was that rain storm that my colleagues

have referred to, and we lost all of the ground just about that we

gained. We lost several roads that we did repair and a lot of miles

of trail.

Olympic National Park did not get any storm damage, emergency

storm damage money, so we took the project money that would

have gone to other projects and redirected that to higher level

emergencies.

I had the distinct pleasure of being out in the park over Labor

Day, and I did a solo hike of about 55 miles. And I had crossed the

Elwha River at Chicago Camp, and I had slipped on the rocks and

gotten my feet wet and stopped and got across and took my boots

off and put my dry socks on.

And I looked at the map and said, ‘‘Well, at least the next stream

crossing has a bridge.’’ And I got to the next stream crossing, and

it had half a bridge. It had a very nice half going over the middle

of the river. And I had forgotten that had been washed out during

the floods of 2003. And so I took my boots and socks off and put

on my Teva’s and went across the river one more time.

I think that park visitors have gone through that many times

over the 600 miles of trails. I think we have gotten trails so that

you can find the root, but we have certainly not repaired trails. As

Dave Uberuaga was saying, most of our trail crew are based or

paid out of project funds rather than National Park Service based

funds. That was not true 10 years ago. It was just the opposite. We

had trail crews paid out of base funds. But we rely on volunteers,

some foresters come in, some conservation associations, Washington Conservation, a number of groups come in to help us out.

But our 600 miles of trails need work. Actually on another hike,

I met two seasonals who I had not met before. They were hiking,

and they had this wheel that they were pushing along. I knew that

they weren’t the usual back country users. They were inventorying

all the trails and the condition.

And we don’t have that yet in our maintenance backlog, and I

think that’s another reason why our number at Olympic National

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Park is low. Mt. Rainier National Park is a pilot park and has

more up-to-date information on roads and trails and maintenance

needs than does Olympic.

And I think that in the next year when we catch up, if you will,

it’s going to show that there are significant needs at Olympic National Park.

Mr. BAIRD. I thank you. And the one thing I would say is we

hear a lot about waste, fraud and abuse in government, and there’s

no question in my mind that we need to eliminate that. One thing

we don’t hear about are the employees who work tremendous

hours, tremendous dedication, volunteer time, and we owe them a

great deal of thanks because as resources have been cut, these employees have really taken it on their own to try to keep fighting the

good fight to keep the resources.

And I want to thank you and thank them through you, and if you

pass on our gratitude, I would appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Reichert.

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to take

the opportunity to thank you, Dave, for your tour several months

ago of 3 to 4 hours. We had the opportunity to watch some volunteers in action repairing one of those foot bridges. And they offered

me a chainsaw, I think, and I turned it down. But it is a great experience to see volunteers, people from around our community,

come out and meet these challenges.

You know, in my previous life with the sheriff’s office, we depended a lot on volunteers, 2,500 volunteers through our search

and rescue program working on Green River, working on you name

it, and they were always there. So this is a truly community effort.

And by the way, you serve a great lunch and have homemade pie

and all that stuff out there. So I can see that’s one of the other reasons why they come out, plus just the fun of it.

We’ve talked a lot about, you know, the funding sources that you

have, and I just jotted down a few notes. The Natural Resource

Challenge, 160 percent increase over 2001 from $251⁄2 million to

$76.6. What does that really mean, the Natural Resource Challenge, that increase, what does that actually get used for?

Ms. MULDOON. The Natural Resource Challenge has been around

since 2001, and that is actually new money that Congress has appropriated to the Park Service. It was an initiative that sort of

came from the ground up. Superintendents put it together and

identified the lack of knowledge that the Park Service really had

across the system in understanding the whole realm of our resources.

So the intent was to establish the natural resource challenge, get

a certain level of funding every year from Congress, which happily

you folks did to help us understand the resources we have in the

parks and help us make decisions that were based on good science.

Mr. REICHERT. So how does—just to followup on that, the good

science effort and those fundings that helped you kind of evaluate

the resources, how does that apply to how you prioritize your maintenance backlog? Does that science come into play in that effort?

Ms. MULDOON. That’s a good question. I will let the superintendents speak to how that might have happened in their parks.

29

Mr. REICHERT. Not yet maybe? See, I always seem to stump the

panel.

Ms. MULDOON. That’s a good one.

Mr. UBERUAGA. Actually, sir, there’s a lack of scientific knowledge in all the parks in terms of the species and bio that are in

existence there, so the Natural Resource Challenge was kicked off

in 1999. Actually it was announced during the National Park Service celebrating Mt. Rainier’s 100 anniversary. So at our centennial

celebration, we had the director, and that was the announcement.

And the goal of that campaign, if you will, was to increase funding for science and natural resources $100 million over the next 5

years. That was the original goal that Congress began, and so

every year it funded for that.

In terms of the resources that are assigned under the Natural

Resource Challenge, there isn’t a direct connection between that

science and our preferred maintenance in a lot of cases. The preferred maintenance primarily has been some re-vegetation, so

there’s been some of that, but for the most part it has been the big

infrastructures, roads, treatment plants is the main focus. So it’s

a direct connection to the deferred maintenance.

Mr. PALECK. I can give you one example. The flood in 2003 literally wiped out half of the campground, the Colonial Campground,

off of State Route 20. It was a campground we inherited from the

Forest Service in 1968. And that portion based on the hydrological

studies that have been done is that the campground never should

have been put in that place.

And the science informed us that in looking at what repairs

should we do, we shouldn’t try to rebuild the entire campground.

Instead we should back off, accept the loss of half a dozen sites in

order to site the facility in a place where it can be sustained.

Mr. REICHERT. I was just curious as to how this might impact the

efforts there in making decisions on just that kind of scenario.

So I would think that good science helps us to make good decisions and helps us to direct our resources where they are most

needed.

And we have talked about the increase of the transportation

budget which really ends up to be instead of 27 percent, as the

chairman said, 3 percent. And there’s been a substantial increase

in your operating funds, but you are still falling behind, you know,

your real needs. So the bottom line is how much money do you

need for your maintenance backlog? Do you have a figure you can

give us today?

Mr. UBERUAGA. I think you would be in shock.

Mr. REICHERT. Because Brian is ready to write a check.

Mr. UBERUAGA. Well, I just have a little bit of context here in

terms of the deferred maintenance. Let me just use Mt. Rainier as

an example. Mt. Rainier is the fifth oldest national park in the system. It’s 106 years old. The infrastructure that was created when

the park was designed is all part of the park experience, plus 3

percent of the front country is now national historic landmark district. Almost all of that is our roadways.

And so all of those historic villages connected through the roadway system are also cultural resources all obtaining the national

30

standard or the high standard in the country of national historic

landmark district.

So you have cultural preservation on top of just maintenance of

infrastructure, and so the preservation and the combination of

those has contributed to the overall cost to the rebuilding of those. And for Mt. Rainier, $71 million is what we have in our system.

Again, we were a pilot study for what we call asset management,

primarily what are the biggest assets we have at Mt. Rainier, and

we prioritized them from No. 1 to 229 and on and on until we had

each one ranked and prioritized. And then we did field condition

assessments that would look at that structure and say how much

is it going to take to repair that.

And then there’s another level of funding coming that would

have an architect or engineer come in instead of a historic carpenter and kind of touch up the professional judgment of the carpenter and then say here’s the best estimate of what the deferred

maintenance is on this, and this is the condition of this facility.

So, based on that and the new asset management program, there

are industry standards that are applied to estimate how much it

would cost to repair those. So we are looking at industry standards,

industry practices for assessing conditions of facilities, finding out

how much it’s going to cost to repair and then estimating those

costs of repairs. So that’s all built into the National Park Service

system now, and each park is taking on that challenge to more accurately define this backlog.

But what I can tell you, quite frankly, is the more you delve into

it, you know, what was maybe a carpenter’s guess as to how much

it was going to take to rehab a building, what was our initial input

into all the systems, and when you come back with a professional

architect, for example, and they look at every detail, then those

numbers all have tended to go up.

So at Mt. Rainier, the historic roads that are out there is about

$71 million, as I said. Just two visitor projects alone at Mt.

Rainier, rehabilitation of the national historic landmark building

Paradise Inn, which is scheduled for 2006, that’s a $13 million

project, and the replacement of the Henry M. Jackson Visitor Center with a new visitor center, between those two it’s a $35 million

in deferred maintenance backlog. Those are backlogged projects in

the National Park System at Mt. Rainier.

So those two replacements, plus the replacement of the Sunrise

Lodge, which is another $10 to $12 million project, those are the

three biggest pieces that add up to $35 million in Mt. Rainier backlog.

And then when I did the inventory on the trails, the bridges, the

campgrounds, several water systems, several sewer systems, all the

historic buildings that we have that are all contributing factors to

the cultural districts, all the back country structures and then

power systems, at two parts of the park alone we generate our own

power, at Sunrise, the second most visited destination in the park,

we are off grid. So you look at those systems, and they do take a

lot to repair.

And what I would call our projected backlog at this time is $168

million for Mt. Rainier.

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

31

Mr. SOUDER. I don’t want to make it a request, but first off I

would like to have the full document inserted into the record. Is

that a problem?

Mr. UBERUAGA. No.

Mr. SOUDER. The second thing is if you have similar documents

for the other parks, that would be helpful, that would show the

specifics of your backlog.

I don’t want you to waste limited time coming up with something

that you don’t have, so when I say go back 5 years, if you have it,

say, like one from 3 years ago and one from 6 years ago, but to do

a comparison to see how that backlog is moving. In other words,

did it drop? Did it go up? And how much of that is because either

projects have fallen into backlog because they haven’t been maintained and how much of that is inflation and how much it would

take to do it if we had done it 5 years ago.

Because I’m not sure exactly, I don’t want to make this too big

of an effort, but one of the things that we’re sorting out here is the

assigned date to pick up projects like you just mentioned with Sunrise, Paradise, roads, trails, moves. It’s a moving target based on

how much we fund national priorities. When we add something like

the Lewis and Clark Park, it changes a region, that you can easily

on those backlogs show if there’s any kind of tracking of how many

times that’s changed.

In other words, like let’s say Sunrise Lodge is slated for 2005,

moved to 2006, moved to 2008 or moved to 2009, so we can just

kind of get a feeling for what is happening with the budget process

as to how you are moving things around.

The bottom line is this is going to blow a huge hole in our budget

and everything, and every agency is feeling squeezed. I mean, part

of the reason we have to be cautious working with this is that we

can talk about a tax increase and we can talk about other things,

but even then we’re talking about a relatively small zone. We have

these same problems with Medicaid, Medicare, water clean up

around the country, so there are going to be squeezes.

What we want to know as the Congress is that we have a right

to know what squeezes are being made. And we don’t feel right

now that we really have a good feeling for the decisions that are

being made. We may still have to make them, but we need to know

what they are.

Mr. UBERUAGA. OK. Help me clarify this, then. And it wasn’t indifference to Katrina and the other country needs that I said that,

but in terms of——

Mr. SOUDER. No, I understand that.

Mr. UBERUAGA [continuing]. This involving truly commiting what

I call a very sophisticated asset management program in place for

the National Park Service to articulate clearly to the appropriators

that this is a bona fide need and here’s how we determine that and

just recognizing there’s a whole range of how each park is in a different stage because we have a 5-year goal to get that.

So each park is on a time schedule to get the assets in, get the

initial assessments and then get the most sophisticated conditions

assessed. So each park will have a little bit different timeframe as

well, and they are all on different schedules.

32

Mr. SOUDER. Just so you know, I want to do this, I’m doing this

in a fair way, the administration understands that I’m a Republican. I’m not hostile, I’m not interested in cutting off Republican’s

debts. Others may, but I’m not, and I’m trying to figure out how

to address this in a realistic way.

My son actually works for the National Park Service, is now in

the Denver office and is working for ops, and so I understand

there’s a lot of evaluation ongoing. And there’s not always an enthusiasm out of administration to share their processes and how

they do this process.

But what we need to kind of understand is what tradeoffs are

being made, and that’s what we’re trying to sort through here. And

we’ll work with the regional director and with Steve Martin and

Fran Mainella because I don’t want to get into the situation like

we get into in, quite frankly, with some other agencies, it’s not just

in the Park Service, in trying to sort out that so we understand,

much like you said, an architect’s estimate may be different than

the carpenter’s estimate.

There are all sorts of levels here of trying to get a handle just

like there’s additional funds in the Natural Resource Challenge and

America’s historic treasures, but they aren’t really new funds. They

were funds that were taken out of your regular operating and backlog to create special target funds.

And for us to understand that when we grade a category that

targets a good project, what does that do to this list of projects you

have or what does that do to raise your interpretation or trail

maintenance? Because to some degree, as a former staffer I can say

this, to some degree we need to understand.

Mr. REICHERT. I think I would be remiss to not recognize the effort that the rangers put forth in securing another area that’s increased in your responsibilities as it has for all local law enforcement, and having visited you and some of the people who work for

you, I know that puts additional stress and strain on protection of

the National Parks and people who frequent the park system is

also a major, major part of your job.

And as my friend Mr. Baird said, we do have great respect for

the work that you do and very much appreciate the effort with the

limited resources and the great job you do, so thank you.

Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BAIRD. Honorable Inslee.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. Let me make a comment, but before

that, I want to thank your personnel. When you talk about trail

maintenance, how hard people work, I climbed Rainier last summer, and it was incredible the work people had done to try to keep

climbers on the right trails so they don’t trash all the meadows

going up.

You could see people that treated it like their kitchen with such

care. It was really amazing. We really appreciate the personnel efforts.

The reason I say that is the sad fact is National Parks are a

mess. It’s just a crying shame what is going on in our National

Parks. And this isn’t from hearings. This is from my personal observation. I go to Mesa Verde down in Colorado. It’s a mess. Paint

is peeling off everything. The hand rails are falling down. The

33

trails going down to see the monuments are closed because they

are falling off the cliff faces.

You go to the climber’s shack at Mt. Rainier National Parks,

paint falling off all over the place. If it was a Holiday Inn, they

would shut it down. You are losing trail interpretive rangers by the

score at Olympic National Park, which I loved for my kids for an

educational purpose. It’s just a crying shame what is going on.

And it’s not because of what you are doing; it’s what Congress

is not doing, which is funding the National Parks. And the reason

it’s not doing it is it’s sacrificing your budget on the alternative tax

cuts. And I hate to be the skunk at the picnic party, but that’s

what is going on.

Now, I just want to ask a simple question: Are we funding the

National Parks? I will just ask you, Ms. Muldoon, if I can, are we

funding the National Parks in a way that we can say that we’ll

hand our National Parks to our grandchildren in as good of condition as we had when we grew up both in a physical condition and

with the services they provide? That’s a softball question.

Mr. BAIRD. You can see the high heat.

Ms. MULDOON. How about those Giants? Well, how do I answer

that? None of us are going to sit here and whine because compared

to other public land management agencies, we are doing quite well.

Mr. INSLEE. Well, would you disagree with me that we are not

cutting the mustard in funding our national parks? Basically, if we

continue the trajectory we are on, we’ll hand National Parks that

are seriously degraded to our kids and our grandchildren, both in

their physical and biological system and in the services we provide

our people? Is that a fair statement?

Ms. MULDOON. I think we’ve made some strides in the last couple

of years. We’ve had increases from Congress for operating budgets

across——

Mr. INSLEE. If we have made strides, then why are we having to

cut rangers, seasonal rangers, in the Olympic National Park? Why

is that? Why do constituents go to Hurricane National Park and

other National Parks and rangers that we saw who had helped do

crowd control and keep people off the meadows and instruct people

on how the frogs and the trout work in the lakes, that kids just

love seeing a person in that uniform tell them what is going on in

the biosphere, why are those people not there if we are doing such

a good job?

Ms. MULDOON. We’ve absolutely lost purchasing power. There’s

no doubt about that. As costs have gone up, operating budgets

haven’t gone up every year. They have in the last two, but they

don’t every year. So we have lost ground over many years, I would

have to say. Absolutely true.

We gained some ground in the Natural Resource Challenge, I

will say, because we do have a better handle now on our resources

than we did 5 years ago.

Mr. INSLEE. If it came to a question of the people that you serve

in the National Parks whether to maintain the Cascade National—

or Cascade Pass Trail in a pristine condition or whether to give

more tax breaks to people earning over $500,000, what do you

think they would say.

Ms. MULDOON. I think I should defer that to the superintendent.

34

Mr. INSLEE. I will let him off the hook. He does too good of a job.

Let me ask you this serious question: On the situation regarding

this proposal to seriously change the mission statement of the National Parks, we are very concerned about this because as we understand it, the proposal is it will change the definition of impairment to say right now you can’t cause impairment of the National

Parks.

But as we understand it, the proposal is when you go and do impairment, particularly for motorized vehicles, jet skis, four wheelers, as long as it’s, ‘‘only temporary,’’ cell phone towers, goodness

knows what, that is a major dimunition of our commitment to the

future generations to head in that direction. We are very concerned

about it.

Have you been involved in those discussions? And, if so, what

can you tell us about it?

Ms. MULDOON. I can tell you a little bit about that. You know,

I have worked for the service since 1985, and during that time

there have been two revisions of management policies. So it’s not

an extraordinary thing that management policies get revisited from

time to time. It is extraordinary that the first draft of management

policies goes out to the public in any circumstance no matter what

they say because it’s always kind of a long, deliberative process. It

goes through many iterations.

So we’ve provided comments on the first draft, every region has,

and there’s a group of Park Service professionals working on that

now. And my understanding is that we’re working toward a new

draft. So that draft that was out there to begin with has already

changed and will undoubtedly change again, and the director has

made a commitment to take it out to the public and have a good

public debate about the management policies.

Mr. INSLEE. And if you have any input in this decision, will you

report that back for the State of Washington, the State of Washington believes it is a terrible idea to diminish the preservative mission of the National Parks, to hand back these most precious jewels

in the Nation to our grandkids unsullied on a permanent basis?

Would you report back to Mr. Hoffman to that effect?

Ms. MULDOON. Yes, sir.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you very much. Thank you. And by the way,

I made a comment about the painting in the climber’s shack. I met

one of your painters back in DC. He’s doing a great job. We’ve just

got to give him a little more help.

Mr. UBERUAGA. I would like to comment on that, if I could. There

is an operational funding for the day-to-day operations at Mt.

Rainier. I want to just mention a couple things.

Last year, in 2004, we conducted a strategic organizational review at Mt. Rainier to address our budget situation and higher operating costs. We engaged all employees in what I call a self-directed evaluation to develop the most effective organization that we

can at Mt. Rainier.

Again, looking at all the circumstances, what do we have control

over, what can we manage at Mt. Rainier versus all the other

things that are going on around us? We developed the 5-year target

organization that we could afford that retained some of the frontline staff while we abolished supervisory positions. We cut 3 perVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:32 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27380.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
35

cent a year or $275,000 a year for the next 5 years recognizing a

total cut of 15 percent or $1.4 million per year from then on for

those 5 years and continuing into the out-years.

In addition, we still have 10 permanent positions that are vacant. We have filled most of these positions with non-permanent,

seasonal, temporary and term positions which reduces our overall

fixed costs, but at a price that will impact the park’s long-term employee retention and management succession.

Our seasonal operations, and this is paid for out of base operations, has decreased 49 percent over the last 10 years. And that’s

approximately 52 seasonal positions at Mt. Rainier. Our permanent

positions are down 7 percent, about eight permanent positions.

What we have done in recent years with the deferred maintenance program, is that we have shifted from a base funded to deferred maintenance, if you will, backlog project based funding. We

have a substantial increase in our deferred maintenance project

funding and have hired term employees and seasonals, and our

project work force has increased by 75 percent.

So to speak to that, there is an impact on park operations. Those

are some of the specifics I have. And the trend is there as well.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, would you allow me one more question? Thank you.

By the way, thanks for coming here to this hearing. We really do

appreciate your interest and leadership on this.

There is this proposal that we could go to, this voluntary checkoff system where you can check on your income tax to send money

to the National Parks. We do it for the Presidential election right

now.

And as the tenor of my comments have indicated, I think we’re

in desperate need of funds for the National Parks, but I think there

is some cause for concern if we tend to move in the direction of

making National Parks kind of a volunteer system that no longer

is a national commitment insuring statute and fiscal policy, but

rather something that is like large bake sales for the PTA. We

don’t do bake sales for the Pentagon. We don’t have check offs

about buying, you know, airplanes.

And I’m a little concerned that this could diminish the umph, if

you will, at budget time to really get commitments for provisions.

Mr. BAIRD. If I may respond.

Mr. INSLEE. You bet.

Mr. BAIRD. I share that concern, but as the co-author of the bill,

admittedly this could be fudged, but the bill specifically says the

money that will be allocated in this mechanism is going to be over

and above the appropriations. So this is meant to be an over and

above resource. But now whether or not the appropriators would

say, ‘‘In fact, we’re getting X amount of money through the Centennial Act, so, therefore, we don’t have to appropriate,’’ that’s our job

in Congress to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Your point is well taken. The point is for us, the reality on the

ground and to some extent I think it’s the case with fee demo.

Many people might wish we didn’t have fee demo, but ask any superintendent I know of, ‘‘Could you make it without?’’ The answer

is no.

36

And so I think Mr. Souder and myself, I can’t speak for the

chairman, but certainly we are cognizant of that. And our hope is,

and I think for me the kind of testimony we’ve heard today and the

kind of visual experience and personal on-the-ground experience of

the American people, they are going to say at some point we actually want a mechanism to give more.

The American people look at the parks and say we see the kind

of impact you have been describing we have heard something about

today. They wish they could do something. Congress hasn’t stepped

up to the plate. This is a way to empower them. I personally, in

supporting this bill, want to share your concern, but say that will

be part of our job to say we can’t start then cutting the appropriations because in view of the Centennial Act revenue, if it comes

about, would supplant that.

Mr. INSLEE. The question is how can we diminish that prospect

that it could diminish our ability to win appropriations? Do you

have any advice for us on that? If we do create this voluntary

stream——

Mr. SOUDER. I don’t think you have characterized it correctly. If

it was a check off, it would be over the Ways and Means Committee. It’s not a check off. It is a bill, and the Resources Committee

has jurisdiction because it will work through this way. It’s much

more controversial than a check off.

It is a set amount of money of which people can designate from

their own, and the Federal Government makes up the shortfall,

that’s not likely to pass in that form, but that’s our goal to try to

fight this debate.

This hearing isn’t about that, but this hearing sets that up. The

second thing with it is that it’s possibly a compromise where individuals, unlike the Presidential campaign where you can give a dollar or whatever, if a company gives $5,000, the Federal Government would match it might be where we would go.

Right now it actually says the appropriation is bigger, and then

depending on how much people give, the government’s responsibility goes down over and above the budget. And that fixed amount

has a baseline Federal budget with a percent on it and then this

has to go above that. So that’s how we’re trying to address it.

I don’t think they need—I don’t want to put the pressure on

them to try to get into how we should write the legislation, but at

the same time I think your basic question to them was in—do they

have enough, I think, is a legitimate thing to ask them.

And then, sure, they are worried that all these private things

may replace baseline funding. I mean, that’s always a risk. But

that’s really for us to figure out. So their goal is to get it from

wherever they can get it.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Ms. MULDOON. Thank you.

Mr. BAIRD. I will follow with two observations: One, you know,

the history of the American National Parks I do not know it well,

but I spent a little bit of time studying it. Part of this came about

as a reference to this proposed management plan. Part of the reason we have our National Parks is because people looked at horror

what had happened to Niagra Falls.

37

The history of the development of our natural park system was

Niagara Falls was a national and international treasure that had

been developed in some of the most garish and outlandish ways

through private enterprise trying to take advantage of this.

And people from Europe particularly came over and Americans

came over to this region and looked at that Niagara Falls and were

astonished at how bad it looked. And there was a realization that

we must not let this happen to other natural areas.

And interestingly at the time there was a certain envy on American’s part of European cultural history and their religious monuments and the great churches. And we saw in America, people at

the time, an opportunity to do something that was uniquely American and that our cathedrals were the cathedrals of the Sequoia

and the cathedrals of the canyons of Yosemite and the great canyons of Yellowstone and the mountains of Mt. Rainier.

That was our heritage and that was vital that we preserve this.

And as I read this new potential management plan, I think we

would be starting a step backward and the biggest step backward

in a long, long time toward the direction that we were trying to

avoid when we started the National Park Service.

And I just cannot underscore how important it is that we not do

that. It is a sad thing to me already that we have a maintenance

backlog. It is a sad thing that trails and interpretive resources are

lost.

But if we change the fundamental core mission of our National

Parks, eternal shame on us because you don’t get it back. You don’t

get it back. One thing——

[Pause.]

Mr. BAIRD. One thing I want to——

Mr. SOUDER. We can give speeches, but you can’t applaud for

speeches.

Mr. BAIRD. We’ll disregard that. But one thing that was eluded

to earlier, and I don’t expect you to necessarily—I had the occasion

to bump into a couple of park rangers, particularly the seasonal

employees. I’m concerned about the long-term morale of our service. There are a bunch of young sprites out there today. I worry

sincerely about this, that as this generation of superintendents and

park workers retire, that the ability to fill that with career employees who see ambiguity, uncertainty, change in mission, change in

responsibility, I think you run a morale risk. And we haven’t

talked about it. We have talked about the money for the ground,

we have talked about the money for the trails, etc. I worry about

morale, and I worry about the incoming pipeline of the dedicated

Park Service employees.

I open it up if you want to talk about that, we can, but I have

talked to some folks who say, you know, this was my dream to be

a park ranger, and I have wondered now if I’m going to have to

abandon that dream.

Mr. SOUDER. What I would like to do is go to the second panel.

I was going to make a similar request of each of you. Mr. Uberuaga

referred to this career track, that would you talk—if you could give

us a written response to this direct question for the record that we

can have as to what you think the impact is on recruitment of

38

young people in the Park Service in addition to the morale of the

Park Service, is there a career track.

If we can only have seniors in, and we all meet young people who

maybe give 7 to 10 years on temporary status——

Mr. BAIRD. Exactly.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. What is happening inside the service?

And is this going to impact the great people with double degrees?

Is this going to impact these people’s patience to do that as they

try to figure out how to cover health care?

Just if you can, just spring forward as straightforward as you

can, this is what I see happening as opposed to editorializing off

of it, which could get into all kinds of discussions. But this is under

oath.

Mr. BAIRD. And particularly, if I may, Mr. Chair, is the seasonal

issue and the issue you raised regarding health care because the

seasonals who are not employed long enough to receive health

care? I think this raises particular challenges, if you can talk about

that in your comments.

Mr. SOUDER. And I’m going to give some other written questions

so we can match up the different hearings and do that to some degree through the park office, through the regional office, but particularly in this area of the upper Northwest, could you give us how

many permanent and seasonal staff the region had 4 years ago as

opposed to currently and any comments you want to add to that.

We also have a question on the maintenance backlog and also

how the recreation fee is working in relationship to this. And also

if you could give me an idea, this is an area of huge natural resource parks, but you also have lots of others that you can refer

to such as the Klondike headquarters.

And some of what is happening here is we are able to cover the

bigger parks better, but some of the small ones may be getting lost

in the system, but if you can give us some indication of whether

that’s occurring as well.

And I want to say for the record, we’re going to have political differences, and Jay has referred back to the question a couple times,

I don’t favor raising taxes. I favor making some adjustments, and

I don’t believe they will solve the problem. I think we can handle

a legitimate disagreement over that.

But from our perspective as the revenues have gone up, the expenditures have soared. And most of it is entitlement spending,

and we have a huge challenge.

And I’m one who believes that we’ve gone too far in some of the

Park Service reductions. But it isn’t going to be like the old days.

There aren’t as many funds to restore the buildings there. We are

going to have to find more ways to be creative, more self service,

creative ways with the Internet.

Our school teachers around the country have a great educational,

cultural, scientific resource in the United States, most of which

probably have more actual original artwork than our national art

museums inside the system. But we have to figure out different

ways to do this because the country is changing. What we have are

the greatest resources we have in America, and we can’t let them

get denigrated for the next generations based on the challenges

that we have.

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And we’ll try to work through our differences of how to do that.

But first we have to define what we have, what is happening to it

and how best to address this and raise the awareness of Congress.

Thank you for participating in that this morning.

If the second panel can start to come forward, we’ll take a brief

recess to give the stenographer a break.

[Recess.]

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will come back to order. And as

you heard from the first panel, each witness has to be sworn in.

So if you will stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses have

responded in the affirmative. Mr. J. Paul Malmberg is here representing—he’s a regional director, Washington State Parks, Southwest Region. He’s representing the Oregon and Washington State

Parks. And we’ll get his testimony.

Let’s start with you.

STATEMENTS OF J. PAUL MALMBERG, REGIONAL DIRECTOR,

WASHINGTON STATE PARKS, SOUTHWEST REGION; SALLY

JEWELL, TRUSTEE, NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION; REX DERR, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON STATE

PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION; TIM WOOD, DIRECTOR, OREGON STATE PARKS; RUSS DICKENSON, FORMER DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; AND ROD FLECK, CITY

ATTORNEY/PLANNER, FORKS, WA

STATEMENT OF J. PAUL MALMBERG

Mr. MALMBERG. Thank you. Chairman Souder, members of the

committee, my name is Paul Malmberg. I’m regional director for

the Southwest Region, Washington State Parks and Recreation

Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you

today. I am pleased to be able to testify on behalf of both Washington State Parks and Oregon State Parks. We like to think that our

joint testimony is an example of the cooperative, seamless twoState park system, as taught by the National Park Service.

We are pleased today to be able to give you an overview of some

of Washington’s major Centennial 2013 goals and to describe our

involvement with a variety of Federal, State and non-profit organizations and partnerships.

Washington State’s Parks System is 93 years old. Established in

1913, we are the Nation’s second oldest State parks system. In 7

years, our system of 120 parks and 260,000 acres will be 100 years

old. With our Centennial in mind, the seven member State Parks

Commission created our Centennial 2013 plan. This plan is a

framework to position and guide the agency as it enters the next

100 years. It is a bold plan that focuses on renewed commitment

to traditional roles, pushing the envelope for future plans and actively connecting with our most important resource: Engaged communities.

The Centennial 2013 Plan has three parts. First, six renewed

commitments to our major activities: To stewardship, the protection and preservation of natural historical and cultural resources;

to quality, the added value of participation in our parks; to our emVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:32 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27380.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ployees, to equip them with a strong customer service ethic; to

partnerships, at all levels to leverage scarce resources beyond status quo to improve the park experience; and to its stable funding

source.

The second feature of our plan is leaving a legacy. This is the

plan’s bold part. It is not only business as usual or the status quo,

it is asking for $100 million—yes, $100 million—as an up-front investment to kick start the first phase of our plan and leave a legacy for the next generation of park users. And we’re asking partners to buy into this legacy with money, muscle and organizational

resources.

The third leg of our Centennial Plan is 100 connections. This

part is the community-based part; the part where local citizens

make local investments to improve local State parks. This phase is

a natural channel for the passion people have for parks.

Now I’d like to go a little more into partnerships, that key feature in the 2013 plan that some of our people refer to as ‘‘parknerships.’’ Partnerships are a key element of Centennial 2013, in

all three areas, commitment, legacy and 100 connections. In building on existing and forming new partnerships, we realize the value

of leverage, the extra boost that individual, group and governmental linkages can give our State parks.

Partnerships are the win/win feature of our plan. The partners

win by giving to the communities, by succeeding in business by

doing good. Of course, parks win, too. In an era of dwindling resources, we can tap into the muscle that makes our country great:

People power. These benefits from partners are not only tangible

bricks and mortar or interpretive shows, they are goodwill and the

seal of public approval of well-invested tax dollars.

Washington State Parks’ view of partnership is not only people

power. The view encompasses more—remember, we’re thinking

boldly here. So our plan will work on attracting corporate sponsorships, foundation support from Boeing, Starbuck’s, Seattle’s Bullitt

Foundation. We are trying for major investments that make a difference.

Now that you have an idea of what we think partnerships are,

let me outline a few of our most important ones to date. The first

is our work with the National Park Service, Oregon State Parks

and other local jurisdictions at the Lewis and Clark National and

State Historic Park on both sides of the Columbia River as it flows

into the Pacific Ocean. Working collaboratively with the National

Park Service as a marketing and management partner, using the

National Park Service Web site, Oregon State Parks, through a

number of State parks, including Fort Stevens, and Washington

State Parks, through a number of State parks, including Cape Disappointment, offer a variety of cultural, historical and natural park

experience in a seamless delivery system.

A second collaboration is referred to as WORP, or Washington

Oregon Recreation Pass, where both Oregon and Washington State

Parks teamed up with the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest

Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land

Management and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to pilot a ‘‘one

pass fits all’’ endeavor. Visitors can use this one pass to enter national parks in the region, park at forest service trailheads, use

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BLM lands and certain Corps of Engineers parks, and park for free

in selected Oregon and Washington State parks. This one-pass experiment is a fine example of strong customer service and the

seamless park system we all aspire to.

A third example of symbiotic partnerships is the Grand Coulee

National Recreation Area. There in Central Washington, the Federal land management agencies, the National Park Service and

Washington State Parks work together for a top-notch Ice Age

Floods interpretive experience. The floods occurred 12,000 years

ago and carved up dramatic landscapes in a four-State area.

Another example of a successful partnership is the Northwest

Discovery Water Trail that runs from Canoe Camp on the Clearwater River in Idaho, down the Snake and Columbia Rivers to Bonneville Dam in the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area, providing kayak, canoe and boating experiences to outdoor enthusiasts

from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and visitors from all over the

country. The trail is a collaboration of 33 different agencies and jurisdictions. As we like to say, the Northwest Discovery Water Trail

is the proof of the partnership pudding.

In addition to the Northwest Discovery Trail, the Lewis & Clark

National and State Historic Park, and the Washington Oregon

Recreation Pass mentioned above, Oregon State Parks provides another fine partnership example in their cooperative effort with the

National Park Service in providing the Fort-to-Sea Trail from Fort

Clatsop to the Pacific. It’s an example of a joint park/trail management borne through partnerships.

There are other examples in operating public information officers, coastal management, long-distance rails-to-trails management

and coordination of training for cultural/historical resource interpretation they portend well for future endeavors that leverage the

resources at all levels—Federal, State, and local, but time does not

permit a detailed description.

As concluding remarks, on behalf of Washington and Oregon, I

cannot emphasize this final point enough: As Federal resources

dwindle or are directed toward recent reconstruction efforts, these

Federal, State, private and non-profit partnerships become more

and more crucial to our joint mission. We view our collaborative

past as a great asset and maybe even a ‘‘best-kept secret,’’ and we

will continue to view our joint future as equally valuable as a key

21st century asset necessary for the success in our mutual, collaborative park-based missions.

Thank you on behalf of the Oregon State Parks and Washington

State Parks. I hope these remarks will help you in your future deliberations. We wish you all well.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Malmberg follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Our next witness is Sally Jewell, the CEO of REI,

I think the favorite store both online and directly of my two sons.

STATEMENT OF SALLY JEWELL

Ms. JEWELL. Great. Then I don’t have to explain REI. Thank you

very much, Mr. Chairman. I especially thank you for traveling out

here to meet in our neck of the woods. I think the view you have

behind me is indicative of the kinds of things that our citizens like

to do in terms of protecting open spaces and beautiful areas amidst

growing urbanizing areas. And we’re in, I think, Representative

Reichert’s district, and you know what a struggle that is. So thank

you. I thank Representatives Inslee and Baird, as well as Reichert,

for being here as well.

REI is—it’s great to know it’s your sons’ favorite store. We are

now in 25 States. We’ll have 82 stores by the end of the year, and

we are hopeful we’ll cross $1 billion in sales. So it is not a small

business. We employ 7,000 taxpayers in those 25 States.

But that’s not why I’m here today. I’m here really as a trustee

for the National Parks Conservation Association [NPCA], which I

will be talking about a little bit.

Unlike the individuals on the panel before us, my salary is not

paid by the Federal Government, and I am free to speak as a citizen. And so I will start by answering Representative Inslee’s question, which is we are not leaving our parks in the same condition

as we inherited them from our parents. And I’m preaching to the

choir here. The four of you know that we have challenges that we

have to solve.

So one of the functions of the NPCA, which was formed in 1919,

I believe the same year the National Park Service was founded,

was to be able to speak out like I can speak out as a private citizen

in favor of protecting the National Parks for future generations

unencumbered and in the condition that we inherited them. That

is the role of the NPCA. We have over 300,000 members and people

sign up voluntarily to support the organizations through the contributions to do exactly this, which is to advocate for not just the

natural resources we’ve heard so much about, but the historical

and cultural heritage of these wonderful places.

I’m also a founding board member of the Mountains to Sound

Greenway, which is in primarily Representative Reichert’s district

and basically runs from the mountains to the sound along I–90.

We’re sitting in it now. And I’m on the board of the University of

Washington Board of Regents and also served on the State of

Washington Governor’s Competitiveness Council looking at what

we need to do within this State to remain competitive.

Before REI, I have 20 years in the banking industry so I have

kind of a varied background and know the complexities that you

must face every day in trying to figure out how to deal with limited

resources to do good things.

I’m an immigrant to this country. One of my first memories coming here with my family in 1959 was of hiking the Carbon River,

an amazing area. Later on as a child, I did a 100-mile trek across

the Olympic Mountains coming out in Dosewallips, which actually

I tried to visit yesterday, but the road was washed out, I guess it

has been for a number of years on U.S. Forest Service land.

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But we live in an amazing place here, and there are amazing

places like this across the country. As a child growing up, my family went to many National Parks mostly in the west, and we always went to the ranger chats. And seeing rangers dressed very

similarly, actually a little bit dressed down from our superintendents here today, but still they had the uniform of the National Park

Service, and that meant a lot to me as a child, as I’m sure it did

to a number of you.

It came a little closer to home this year. My son is actually a volunteer climbing ranger at Mt. Rainier National Park. He hasn’t

run into Dave Uberuaga very much. He’s down the totem pole quite

a bit, actually quite a bit of time spent volunteering on the trails

and swinging a pick ax and other things.

But I’ve had, besides a lot of Rainier dust to clear out about

every week when he brings his pile of dirty laundry home, I’ve had

a lot of opportunity to talk to him about what it’s like to work in

the parks. And there is a shift. There is a shift away from interpretive rangers. There are no where near as many as there once were.

The NPCA put out a report called Endangered Rangers, and I

know you are all familiar with that. Representative Dicks brought

it up at I think it was an Interior Appropriations Subcommittee or

Appropriations Committee, raising the issue of the reduction in the

number of rangers available to do interpretive programs.

My husband and I a year and a half ago went to Yosemite. Of

course, we went to all the chats that we could get to, and none of

them were put on by rangers. They were all put on by contractors.

And it’s just not the same.

So I know that when I think about the experiences I had as a

child compared to the experiences my children have right now, it

is different.

My son’s roommate has been a ranger at Olympic National Park

and now Rainier National Park, and he is an interpretive ranger,

back country ranger, but he’s taking the law enforcement classes

that now one needs to do to move ahead in the park. So the shift

from interpretation toward law enforcement is also very true in the

parks as they work on security issues, not the things, perhaps, that

we traditionally associate with rangers, although, that is an important component.

These park rangers inspired in me a love of nature, respect for

culture and also through a lot of our historical parks the sacrifices

that our forbearers made in shaping the country. So I hope we can

get back to that and not just have them babysat until somebody

gets out to help encourage future generations to appreciate what

we have.

Funding challenges are increasingly evident in the parks that I

visit. I reference those a little bit. I think that you all are aware

of it, and I will try to not repeat the testimony I just heard, so I

will scale back on a fair amount of it. I do have two tables that

are in my written testimony. One talks about the base operating

budget of each of the 14 national park sites in Washington and Oregon and where they were in 2004, 2005 and 2006 and what the

increases in those budgets were, and in addition there’s a table on

the economic impacts of the National Park System in the northwest, and they are substantial.

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There is chronic underfunding in our National Parks. You are

aware of it. Chairman Souder and Representative Baird have cosponsored the National Parks Centennial Act. We applaud that.

The NPCA is fully in support of that, and we really appreciate your

effort to move that forward.

This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. This is an American problem. It spans every part of the political spectrum. And I

just appreciate the courage that you all have to sign onto that bill

and to try and move it forward.

Business plans that were developed in over 70 National Parks

across the Nation show that on average parks operate with only

two thirds of the funding that they need. That adds up to a systemwide deficit of $600 million annually, so it’s no surprise that the

annual operation budgets have not kept pace with the need. And

we heard about that from the individuals a few minutes ago.

Increased security demands, as I mentioned, are an issue. The

years following September 11th, a number of the resources from

our National Parks here have been sent to help protect places like

the Golden Gate Bridge and Statue of Liberty. That’s all coming

out of the local budgets, and they are having to absorb these

unbudgeted costs.

Chairman Souder mentioned in his opening remarks the cost of

living adjustments that are mandated, but when the budgets don’t

keep up with those cost of living adjustments, it means you scale

back a number of people, and that’s exactly what is happening.

We’ve also heard about storm damage. I think that’s true in

many National Parks, not just the ones here. These are wild and

wooly places, and they are costly to maintain.

I won’t even get into oil prices because that’s going to impact

every part of our economy, but it certainly impacts the National

Parks with all of the vehicles they have to maintain to run it.

When we look at the Pacific Northwest budgets at a glance, only

2 of the 14 park sites in the Northwest are slated for base increases which are above the rate of inflation, and that’s all identified in that table that I mentioned in the upcoming 2006 budgets.

On average, the parks are going to get an increase of 2.6 percent

compared to inflation of 3.1 percent—(Telephone interruption.)

That’s an obnoxious ring.

But because inflation is higher than what the Parks’ budgets are,

we are continuing to have the same struggles. I do want to recognize, however, that in 2005, there was a significant increase, and

we really appreciate that, and you can see that in the tables.

It’s going to take a sustained effort to increase the annual funding. It’s not going to be annual appropriations alone, and it’s going

to require public/private partnerships. We heard a little bit about

some partnerships in the State parks, and we’ll talk in a minute

about something REI is doing and a number of folks like us, but

it’s not the only solution.

So let me talk just briefly and even more briefly than I intended

to about two of our premiere Pacific Northwest area parks, and

that’s Mt. Rainier and Olympic.

At Mt. Rainier National Park, it’s an active volcano. REI’s distribution center, all the stuff that your sons order through mail

order, comes from a distribution center in Sumner, WA. It’s on the

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volcano evacuation route to Mt. Rainier. There are actually signs

that say that Mt. Rainier blows this way.

There is no full-time volcanologist on staff at Mt. Rainier National Park. It’s the kind of thing we think they should have given

the uniqueness of that particular asset.

We heard from Dave Uberuaga about the deferred maintenance. I had in excess of $100 million. He said $168 a few minutes ago.

Mt. Rainier has better information than the other parks. We talked

about that. The strategic operational review in 2004 found that the

flat budgets, higher operating costs and the increased work loads

were factors stressing the park, and they went through that very

effectively.

If you want to just cut to the quick, in constant dollars, inflation adjusted, the Parks 2004 budget of $9 and a quarter million have

been flat lined since the last increase at 1997. And that is, I think,

pretty indicative of other parks as well.

We appreciate Representative Reichert getting out there. I

thought you were operating a chainsaw. I guess not. But at least

that’s what was reported.

Mr. REICHERT. That’s a little scary.

Ms. JEWELL. But for those of us who do get out and volunteer

in the Parks, you get a real sense of just how hard the work is to

maintain these things, how critical the volunteers are, but also how

critical good staff is to be able to get the job done effectively.

Olympic National Parks: a million acres, 65 miles of shoreline.

It’s an amazing, amazing park. Part of the work of the NPCA is

to do reports called the State of the Parks. They are working their

way around the country, but they have done Olympic. And they put

in place a rating scale about how effectively the park is able to support and steward its resources, natural, cultural, historic.

Unfortunately, Olympic National Park rated a poor 59 out of 100

on that score card, and that is not at all because the staff is not

running like squirrels in a cage doing as much as they can. And

we heard from Bill, and the staff does incredible work out there.

But it’s just because there aren’t enough of them.

The health of Olympic National Park is threatened by an annual

shortfall of about $6 million just in the base budget funding. So we

talked about Elwha dam. This is just the basic operations.

This was a shocking statistic to me and perhaps improved a little

bit, Bill, in 2005, but the number of seasonal rangers was reduced

from 130 in 2001, to only 25 in 2004. The seasonal rangers are the

backbone of these programs. Those are the people you run into in

the back country. Those are the people you rely on to answer your

question or to call for help if you have an injury.

And 2 years ago, in addition, funding shortfalls threatened to

close the visitors center in Forks, and I suspect Rod Fleck will be

talking a little bit about that. But these are—it’s not only critical

for protecting the resources, it’s an engine of an economy that otherwise has survived on timber harvest and is changing, you know,

for the good, I think, in large part because of Olympic National

Park. It won’t be if we can’t maintain those resources.

NPCA recently collected 5,000 comment cards at various parks

from park visitors. This is just this past summer. And I thought

I was going to have a box of them. I guess not——

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Mr. SOUDER. It’s there.

Ms. JEWELL. Oh, it’s there. All right. I can’t see it, but there’s

a box. I’m told there’s a box; 5,000 personalized comments from

park visitors, and, you know, not unlike the four of you who expressed your comments earlier, they’re very engaged in National

Park issues. They care a lot about it, and they expressed a great

deal of concern for the parks.

I’m just going to read a few of the quotes. David of Kirkland,

WA, ‘‘Along with the wilderness areas, the National Parks are all

we have left. Future generations will judge our efforts in whether

we sit around or preserve these areas.’’

From Jonathan of Vancouver, WA. Gee, it just happens to be in

your district. What do you know? ‘‘The National Parks provide historical information. They also promote tourism which helps stimulate the local economies.’’

And from Joseph and Margaret Miller from right here in Bellevue, ‘‘We worked from the late 1950’s to 1968 for the establishment

of North Cascades National Park. Upon our retirement in 1970, we

worked as unpaid volunteer biological researchers for the National

Park Service. We feel that the current lack of funding is undoing

much of this work.’’

So that is very indicative of the comments that were in the 5,000

folks that chose to participate in supporting the kinds of things

that you know.

I want to talk just a minute about public private/partnerships

and specifically REI just by way of example, but there are many

other examples. Just as increased public funding is critical to the

health of natural parks, private dollars through partnerships also

play a critical role. We have done a number of things with the Park

Service just to indicate to you some of the examples out there.

Last year, REI donated $100,000 to support the National Parks

Volunteerism and Enhancement Program, and that was through

the National Park Foundation. Specifically we took 130 volunteer

projects and narrowed them down to 22 that we could fund and

then provided funding to support the volunteer efforts to do that.

So bringing those folks into the park to do good work that you

heard our superintendents talk about a little bit ago.

Over the last few years, we supported sales of the National Park

Pass in our stores, and in addition we did a shirt promotion with

all of our employees that had a ranger on the front, you know, raising awareness of the National Parks and the National Parks Pass,

the work of the foundation and supporting parks overall.

In addition, we did custom artwork for several of the National

Parks and with the proceeds going to support those parks.

We’ve also supported something called Japan Volunteer in the

Parks Program at Mt. Rainier. The country of Japan provides volunteer students to come over and work in our National Parks every

year, something that maybe we could be doing as well.

The public places a really high value on the National Parks, and

while REI is a private organization and other philanthropies are

more than willing to partner with the Park Service, it has to be

clear that the role of philanthropists and businesses like ours

should provide the margin of excellence, not the margin of survival.

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We should provide the margin of excellence, not the margin of survival.

When the private sector sees the funding that it’s doing supplanting the resources that we should be providing as a country,

you can bet that firms are going to retreat and say, ‘‘Wait a

minute. This isn’t right.’’ And I think that’s so critical. It’s just too

big for any philanthropist or any private individual or company to

do. We have to work hand in hand.

I have talked briefly about the benefits, economic benefits. Just

to quote a few statistics, according to the National Park Service,

overall in the country, the National Parks generate about $11 billion in economic impacts each year. That’s 226,000 tourism-related

jobs in local economies, as well as lots of positive economic impacts

on those economies.

I gave you the table. More than 8 million tourists visited the National Parks in the State of Washington and Oregon in 2003. They

spent over $250 million, created over 6,700 jobs and generated over

$100 million in income to our communities, and I suspect Rod is

going to talk a little bit about his own community and its impact.

So in conclusion, the work you are doing is good work. It’s important work. We have to fund these parks. We have to find a way

to do it.

I know that this is a time of sadness in our country. I know that

there will be many resources that are directed toward the hurricane-damaged areas. It’s just like private philanthropy, we can’t

allow other things, other needs in our country, to go unmet as we

respond to this catastrophe. I really think we need to do both. And

I so applaud the work you are doing in raising awareness with the

National Parks Centennial Act and having these hearings out here

and listening to how important these treasured resources are for

all of us. Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Jewell follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Our next witness is Mr. Russ Dickenson, a former

director of the National Park Service. Roger Kennedy was at our

last hearing up in Boston, and we appreciate you giving us kind

of the oversight of having been in the system and your willingness

to speak out today.

STATEMENT OF RUSSELL E. DICKENSON

Mr. DICKENSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. My name is Russ Dickenson. I’m retired from the National

Park Service. I live in Bellevue, WA. And I might say at my age

and with the amount of experience I’ve had, I’m history. After

World War II service as a Marine, I entered the National Park

Service in 1946 as a park ranger at Grand Canyon. During my 39

years with NPS, I held many different positions in parks coast to

coast as a ranger, chief ranger, superintendent, regional director of

two regions, one of which was the Pacific Northwest, deputy director of the service under Director No. 7 and 8 and became the 11th

Director of the service for 5 years in 1980 to 1985. As director, I

served under two Presidents, President Carter and Reagan.

Following my retirement, I served 4 years on the Secretary of Interior’s National Park System Advisory Board and 15 years as the

board member of Eastern National, which is a nonprofit operating

association which supports the Eastern National park areas and

their interpretive and educational projects.

I’ve been able to keep reasonably abreast of NPS issues and programs. And one of my fundamental beliefs is that the National

Parks and historic areas have a special place in our culture and in

the hearts and minds of the American people. So it has been really

disappointing in recent years that an adequate level of support

from the Department and Congress has not always been forthcoming.

When I was director, we had a park restoration and improvement program which devoted $1 billion over a 5-year period to park

resources and facilities. It was a magic time. In the 20 years since

I’ve left, the backlog and maintenance and needed improvements

have gradually increased I have been told to an estimated range

of $41⁄2 billion to $9 billion, and the available operational dollars

are also inadequate.

Many visitors are not having a fully satisfactory park visit.

Fewer rangers, fewer interpreters, fewer information personnel at

visitor centers and reduced hours, trail walks fewer, fewer camp

grounds, etc.

An adequate operating budget at the park level at each park is

critical to fixing the problem. The Park Service has some of the

most talented and dedicated people you would hope to find in any

institution or profession, but they need help. The capacity of park

superintendents, rangers and staff to do the job that Congress and

the American people expect is being steadily eroded and the morale

along with it.

There is not a park in the Pacific Northwest that isn’t being

forced to leave important jobs undone or staff positions unfilled because of insufficient operating income. Despite the fiscal year 2006

increase in $50 million in base funding for total NPS, 13 of the 15

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park units in the Pacific Northwest will receive funding that fails

to keep up with inflation.

The work Congressman Dicks and others of you have done to direct additional resources to Park Service operations is admirable

and sorely needed, but I believe we are at another point in our national history when we must reinvest in our National Park System.

We did it during the 1930’s depression. Remember the CCC era

and the magnificent improvements in National Parks that occurred, again after World War II during the Eisenhower Mission 66

program, and I was very much a part of that, and it gave a boost

that we can see to this day.

It is time to consider a reinvestment program again. Anything

less simply won’t get the job done. The National Parks need the

kind of leadership and attention that you, Mr. Chairman, and each

Member of Congress may help provide.

I hope that my 10-year-old great grandson with his developing

appreciation of the natural world and the National Parks will look

back on this time as the turning point when our Nation, despite

all our problems foreign and domestic, chose to save and enhance

these wonderful world-renowned natural and historical areas keeping these areas unspoiled for generations to come.

Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dickenson follows:]

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Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I need to ask your indulgence. I have

to catch a flight back to the other Washington. I would like to just

thank the panelists. I regret that I can’t be here for any of the

questioning, but thank you for your service. And thanks again to

the folks who have joined us today.

And thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for hosting this and to my

colleagues for their work. Thank you. I apologize I have to step out.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Our next witness today is Rod Fleck from Forks, WA, talking

about the community impacts. I appreciate you being here today.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM R. FLECK

Mr. FLECK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. My name is Rod Fleck. I’m the city attorney and planner for Forks, WA. Mayor Reed, I’m standing in for her. She extends her regrets. She’s at a 50th class reunion. She will make it

very clear for me to point out it’s for her husband, not her.

And I apologize to Sally because the phone that went off. I believe it is my 4-year-old telling me about her first day at preschool.

So it’s a great honor, and I appreciate the honor to testify. I have

two records in my written testimony that I submit for you in your

consideration. I will refer to those a little bit later.

Forks is a wonderful community. It’s in a remarkable State. And

I will say in one of the longest footnotes you probably have ever

seen, I give you my love for this State and all the wonders in it.

We are a small rural city out on the Olympic peninsula about 3

hours and a ferry ride away from here. It’s 3,200 people there that

call it home. We are the hub in a 2,000 square mile area with

12,000 people. We’re rural. We are remote. We are unique for our

salmon, our salamanders, our forests and our beaches. Oh, yeah,

we get a lot of rain, so much so that we measure it in feet.

And as a rural community, we understand the functions of our

various land managers. Some lands are for timber production and

others are for recreation. And I’m here to talk about the recreation

and its role. Tourism is a conscious part of our diverse location efforts and our local economy.

The Olympic National Park sites that we have around us within

about 20 minutes include lakes, mountains, beaches and rivers.

They’re huge draws and have huge economic impact.

On the peninsula alone, the estimates are that there’s about $91

million spent by tourists visiting our region every year; $41 million

generates jobs and personal income to the families of my neighbors.

Diane Schostak, our Forks Chamber of Commerce director, I once

asked her, ‘‘What is the estimate of the tourism segment into our

sector of employment?’’ She goes, ‘‘I would say, minimum, it’s 1 out

of 10, and it’s probably a lot higher than that,’’ in just our little

town of Forks.

Up until 2004, though, we took our parks for granted, and we

weren’t alone. They are always there. And we then started hearing

of service local adjustments that would include changes to the

Forks Visitor Center. It’s a unique relationship that the Park and

the Forest Service have and a transit center that was paid for by

Federal dollars, and the suggestion was that it was going to have

to be closed.

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Well, that caught our attention. We are known to be very vocal

in our little community. And we started working with the National

Park Conservation Association and others to say we’re not sure we

should have our superintendents having to make these decisions

about what do I fund here because I can’t absorb the cost of increases in fuel, health care, things like that.

We started to learn a lot about the Park and the Park Service.

We also in 2004 watched something that I think every American

deserves to be proud of, and that was the bipartisan level of leadership by you, Mr. Chairman, your colleague Representative Baird,

Congressman Dicks, Representative Taylor, Representative Inslee

and Representative Larsen and others to work across the aisle to

find solutions in the leadership and funding. We’re extremely

grateful in our little community. We don’t get to tell you guys that

often. You probably hear us complain about things. But we are extremely grateful for that.

But we also learned that NPS has challenges. Now, it is not easy

for a citizen to travel the park system, the park service. I will say

I am a pretty good researcher in a lot of odd little things. The Park

Service is difficult to figure out and ferret information out about.

What I can say is that while the budgets remained relatively stable in Olympic National Park in fiscal year 2001, there are 202

FTE billed there. In fiscal year 2004, there are 177 billed there.

They did get additional visitors’ support, and Superintendent

Laitner uses that very, very wisely. There is no waste. There is no

over excess in our National Park Service when it comes to these

people’s hands in the field. They can take a penny and get you

probably 2 or 3 cents on whatever you give them in time and dedication.

But those changes and those shifts in the FTE impact our infrastructures and our visitors. Visitors in their parks expect what I

expect in classrooms, smaller tour sizes, safe and clean structures

and open facilities, yet the budgets are not meeting all those costs.

Superintendent Laitner and others are having to triage maintenance between trails, buildings, roads, camp sites, sometimes just

making sure the septic system at the Hoh is functional that week.

They are also seeing overloaded staff, and those reductions are

having impact on everything from law enforcement to interpretive

services.

In that role, you see a reliance on volunteers. I’ve seen it in the

last year. I’ve been traveling and asking people at parks from

Chilcote, OH, to Spotsylvania to Gettysburg to the Olympics. Volunteers are great resources, but we need to caution the NPS to use

these wonderful folks to supplement, not supplant trained staff, especially the law enforcement folks. I don’t want to criticize volunteers because they are a godsend. They should be adequately noted

and given the recognition they deserve, and in my written testimony I talk about a couple examples where that’s not the case. I

appreciate REI making the effort to overcome that.

In addition, sponsorship should augment but not supplant National Park Service operations and maintenance and avoid costly

shifts to local governments and entities. That is one of the questions that came up, could the city of Forks maybe absorb some of

these costs or help us cost share this. With all due respect, sir, my

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city can just get by. We don’t have a luxury of doing that. We

would love to. We just don’t have that ability. There’s a lot of other

small little communities like that.

In the letter I provided from the 20 chambers of commerce

around the Northwest, there are many little communities just like

Forks from Sedro-Woolley to Concrete and others that just don’t

have those resources, even though we rely upon the parks for its

economic development and stability, 8 million visitors in 1 year

generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for our little

communities.

The other thing I would like to talk about real quickly as an example is the Hoh Visitors Center. It’s a neat little place. The staff

there are the hardest working people I have ever met in my life.

And to be candid, it’s a Mission 66 vintage visitors center. It was

built during the Kennedy administration. And yes, Superintendent,

I can say that it’s older than me. It was built for about 15,000 to

20,000 visitors a year. Today it receives 260,000 people a year. In

August alone, it received 70,000 people a year.

I don’t want to get into septic engineering and all those things,

but I can tell you that is a problem at the very base level in the

park there.

And it’s just not built for the use it gets. I was up there with a

person a week and a half ago, and we walked in with 15 people,

and it was a crowded facility. I think it’s smaller than the open

area we’re in right now, including the offices, for 260,000 people,

70,000 people in August. Start doing the math by hour, and you

can start to see you become very close friends with a lot of people.

It also doesn’t have some of the things that I have seen in other

visitor centers, a lecture area, a movie area, things like that. I’m

not saying it’s bad, it just needs some assistance. They are keeping

it in wonderful shape. Truly 140 some inches of rain can do damage to a lot of buildings, you can only imagine, and these folks have

kept that place up. It is a remarkable effort they undertake.

Our community, our city, adopted a resolution which I have provided you that supports the National Park Centennial Act. We appreciate your leadership on that and Representative Baird. We

think that is the way to have the citizens participate and say we

care about this. In return, in our dollars we gain back, we would

like to take some of that and give it back and say deal with this.

From preserving artifacts at Gettysburg to the Olympic National

Park’s beach trails, my family will put some small sum in there if

we are fortunate to get a return that year.

That money can also deal with invasive species. That hasn’t been

talked about, but in our area Knotweed is a tenacious weed that

has slowly been creeping into the salmon bearing bred areas. We

need to deal with those and have additional funding for the Park

Service. The Park Service has been a leader in that effort. I commend Mr. Laitner for that, but he needs to have the resources to

make that invasive species no longer a part of our problem.

And we need to ensure that we stabilize our Parks as our Nation

needs to grow and change over the years to come. We’ll stay involved, and you will probably keep hearing from us, right or wrong.

And then finally I just want to point out we brought for each one

of you, because we knew you couldn’t make it to Forks, a little

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token from Forks saying thank you. A friend of mine, Pat Boyle,

and the folks at Hoh River wanted to make sure I brought these

for you guys and said if you are ever out our way, we’ll ensure that

you have a wonderful visit.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fleck follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Let me make a couple comments. I have a few questions, I will yield and then finish up with some follow-up to my initial comments here.

First off, on the question of whether or not volunteering private

donations, demonstration fees are replacing or supplementing, it’s

been interesting. I have never heard, Jay may have heard here and

there, and quite frankly it’s mysterious to almost everybody exactly

how the appropriations process works, even members of the Appropriations Committee and the Speaker’s office. But I’ve never heard

a discussion of anything replacing.

In fact, one of the biggest challenges when we do our annual letter where we ask them to increase Parks funding, and I think Congressman Lewis has been one of the leaders of that, but we kind

of work together with NPCA in trying to target what is a workable

number that can be just higher than they will possibly go but then

try to leverage it, and Congressman Dicks does the best he can inside appropriations to make that happen on the Democratic side,

and we work with our leadership.

The pleading we usually get is from the Fish & Wildlife Service

and from other agencies inside Interior. Quite frankly, any vote we

take for Parks, it will just come straight out of the Department of

Interior, that our challenge is not so much—I’ve never heard, ‘‘Oh,

they are getting all these funds,’’ it’s that, ‘‘If you don’t put those

funds in, the parks just won’t have those people. There won’t be

volunteers. There won’t be as many visitor centers open. Without

the demonstration fees, we wouldn’t have the dollars.’’

It’s not like we’re making a calculation saying, ‘‘Oh, we can cover

this in the private sector.’’ It just isn’t there. But putting up markers that show how short the Park Service is helps keep that from

happening because it’s, I believe right now, a theoretical problem.

But we’re so panicked. It’s much like in New Orleans, the fact that

private relief is going in isn’t supplanting what we are going to do

in the Federal Government because we can’t possibly meet all the

needs combined together. And I think that’s more of a question

there.

I have some strong personal frustration with local and State

leaders, and I’m just going to say this flat out. Don’t talk to me

about your problems with revenues. Your total deficits together in

all of America don’t equal ours. Don’t ask the Federal Government

to increase taxes if you won’t increase taxes. The fact is that there

are the same revenue sources at the local level as there are with

us, and that’s to raise taxes.

It is a terrible problem we all have. Nobody wants to elect anybody from either party, with the exception of Jay, who is going to

increase taxes, and he is targeting his to a small group. A broad

group does not want to pay tax increases. They all think they can

get something for nothing.

And that we’re in this together, and we’re going to have to jump

together, but the fact is our deficits are bigger proportionally. The

only difference is we can print money, which inflates it and causes

interest rates to change.

So when we look at what is happening in the world, we’ll just

appropriate the money and print extra dollars so we can backdoor

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a tax increase, which you all can’t do at the State and local level.

But in these partnerships, we have to figure out how to do this.

Now, one thing in Washington that is kind of interesting, you

have more visitor centers at Mt. St. Helen’s I think than you have

at the whole rest of the State, which is another challenge. It’s not

the Park Service, but it is an illustration of some of the challenges

we face based on how many access points there are.

The pass system, I was just amazed this summer when I saw

first in Oregon that different agencies were actually cooperating in

a pass because as we put these fees in, if we don’t work together,

the average consumer in the United States is just appalled because

they pay one fee and then they pay another fee and then they pay

another fee, and the systematic way of working together is great.

I would like your brain power to be put in this. We don’t have

to do this today, and we are going to put anything you want to submit for the record, your full testimony will go in, in addition to

what is indeed the longest footnote I have ever seen in Mr. Fleck’s

testimony, but if you want to submit anything else. But we’re looking for suggestions.

And one of the problems with these fees is how to address this

with lower income people because in my opinion the public support

for the fees is there as long as they see it being used actually for

the parks. The authorizing committee already signed off on trying

to address these free for low income, as have the appropriators.

The problem is nobody can agree on how to do this without having,

you know, what do you have to do, present a student free lunch

card there showing that you are getting AFDC? How do you do this

in a fair way?

At our last hearing, it was suggested that one possibility would

be that in your tax form, if you are at, pick a figure, $35,000 or

less, you could either check, which probably won’t work, or have it

automatically go over where you get sent a parks pass.

The question is, resistance may come from IRS because we are

using them for something other than just taxes, but how to do this

in a simple way is our challenge because this isn’t going to go down

less.

The Park pass is an incredibly good bargain, and it shows people

will pay fees or taxes if they believe it’s going to be used wisely.

But we’ve got to figure out how this doesn’t disproportionally impact low income people’s access to it.

Now, what I wanted to start with in this question time is with

Mr. Dickenson. We’ve heard this management policy question, and

I don’t want to plunge into too much detail because I think it’s a

good point that’s going to evolve, but this has hit all of us in a different way as we’ve more or less been stalemated in Congress from

any major changes in either direction.

Are management policies, what has been proposed here, are they

followed closely by superintendents? Are these binding? What

would policy changes out of the Department of Interior mean as a

practical matter? Did you work through any of this type of thing

before to fight off some——

Mr. DICKENSON. The management policies at the time give guidance to field personnel in terms of the operational problems that

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may arise and also to express the values and the long-term philosophical operational approach to dealing with the park problems.

From time to time, there are events and situations that arise

that cause a change, be it popularity of snowmobiles and whether

or not those should be admitted to all areas and have the winter

use program, etc.

But I’ve never in my time, in my time, have never seen anything

as insidious as what is being proposed now by the Hoffman paper.

My understanding of this thing is that it would change the entire

approach of superintendents and others who make policy decisions

at the park level which would be tragic in terms of the long-term

effect on the national park system.

So not to minimize, not to minimize the effect of those management policies because they are followed, and I would predict, however, that the rank and file of the National Park Service, if somehow these changes came about, there would be a rebellion.

I think that the people in the service are so deeply committed to

the preservation of these National Parks into the future for use by

future generations that you will probably see a mass exodus. I

don’t think a lot of people would continue to support the parks.

Mr. SOUDER. You were parks director under Secretary Watt.

Mr. DICKENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Did you see any similar proposal? The most controversial words are ‘‘would irreversibly harm.’’ Did you ever hear

that proposed under Watt or under Reagan?

Mr. DICKENSON. Not in those terms. There were efforts from time

to time to enlarge the kinds of permissible uses in National Parks

which included oil drilling, a more favorable view toward leasing

minerals, etc. So I can say that it didn’t occur. Why didn’t it occur?

Well, it didn’t occur because I fought it, a lone voice in the wilderness at times, but I fought it. There was strong support on the hill

to maintain the status quo.

Above all, I always felt that I could rely upon the citizens of the

United States of America to fight such an insidious proposal to

change—to radically change the way we operate parks.

If you start opening it up to the kinds of uses which I think are

being proposed, you will no longer have a National Park System,

per se. The kind of purpose that it serves now is renowned worldwide. And while there are different standards in different countries

regarding parks, one of the basic things is the preservation of these

natural features and cultural features for the use of future generations. That’s constant throughout.

Mr. SOUDER. And irreversible harm, would that term with the

possible, I mean, certain cultural resources, like, if basically the

Declaration of Independence were destroyed, it wouldn’t be there,

but wouldn’t almost everything else be reversible? It would almost

just be a question of the time? In other words, isn’t that almost like

a double standard?

Mr. DICKENSON. If you want to talk about cultural resources.

Mr. SOUDER. But take a natural resource that you had that the

only thing that would limit something is irreversible harm, most

things will bounce back. It’s a question of whether it’s 10 years or

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thing is allowable under a standard of the only things that are

banned is if it does irreversible harm?

Mr. DICKENSON. Not in my view because the visitors to the National Parks System of the United States expect to find a certain

standard of performance. And one of the long-running battles that

has occurred is timber extraction of the National Parks. Sure, it

will come back in 100 or 200 years, but what is the immediate effect upon the visitor who comes to have a recreational experience

in the park to see a series of clear cuts next to Old Faithful?

I have great difficulty reconciling the irreversibility argument. I

think that we went through a lot of policy discussion about the extinction of force fires. There’s great natural value in having natural

burns. Allowing for natural succession depends on it.

I always felt, however, that those fires, those fires, which are in

the vicinity of public use areas or those that may impact the quality of the visitor experience, need to be extinguished now promptly

because of the scarring. That is something that the visitor doesn’t

expect.

And I believe the expectations of the American people are that

they do not want to have damage inflicted even on a short term

or long term basis on National Parks. Let the natural processes

work.

Mr. SOUDER. So your definition of irreversible harm would also

be relative to what the expectations are of the visitors, what their

expectation is to see and that harm isn’t just conceptual, kind of

like, well, this will bounce back in 200 years because most of you

will be dead in 200 years who are visiting the parks, and it says

not only to preserve, but for the enjoyment thereof.

And you believe it would be irreversible harm for the enjoyment

thereof for the people coming to the park?

Mr. DICKENSON. Precisely. I just cannot reconcile the short term

impact. For what purpose? Is there a commercial motive involved

here, you know? And commercialism inside the park isn’t allowed.

That’s why the whole system was set up as it was from the outset

in the event the multiplication of facilities all competing for the

tourist dollar.

And so I just believe that any kind of change in the basic policy

governing the long-term maintenance of the park would be tragic.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Mr. Inslee.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Dickenson. I very much appreciate

your service in those past decades. I’m glad your voice is still active, and that of Mr. Watt is in the dustbin of history, so I appreciate you are still here.

Mr. DICKENSON. Those were busy years.

Mr. INSLEE. Yes. You faired very well through those years. We

appreciate your courage in those difficult times sometimes. You

mentioned this Mission 66, and it spurred a thought. Is there some

grander vision that we should be thinking about here? You know,

listening to our discussion, I was thinking, you know, we’re fighting

for appropriations, we’re fighting to keep up with inflation, sort of

dry account is the types of terms.

For those of us who are real believers in the parks and the

grander vision of the parks, should we be thinking in a different

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image or statement or campaign? Should we be thinking about a

new birth of the American park system? Should we be thinking

about some other nomenclature or package to wrap up our vision

for the parks that is grander in scope that may connect more with

the American people?

Do you have any thoughts in that regard? I don’t have any. I

would love to know yours.

Mr. DICKENSON. The 100th anniversary of the establishment of

the National Park Service comes in 2016. And some people have

thought in terms of a renewed reinvestment effort tied to that.

That has some merit, I believe. It’s quite a way off, but in view of

the multiple problems facing the United States now and the drain

on the budget, etc., probably some long-range thinking ahead of

time is desirable and that is one of the things that is being considered by some.

Mr. INSLEE. Great idea. We should start thinking about it.

Ms. Jewell, you come from a business perspective, and I have not

heard at least anything of any significance of criticisms of the Park

Service for their managerial skill. In other words, the typical reaction is you get funding issues, No. 1, either you are not spending

it well enough, you are wasting it or you don’t have enough revenues.

And I haven’t heard much criticism of the Park Service of massive waste, fraud and abuse. I think I heard of a $600 outhouse

somewhere that made the headlines briefly, but from your organization’s standpoint, is there any specific suggestions in that regard

as far as sort of managing and approving management from a fiscal perspective that we ought to consider besides the revenue side?

Ms. JEWELL. Well, I think that overall there is no criticism that’s

appropriate to level at the Park Service for mismanagement of resources. I think they are doing a very good job under the circumstances. I think as Dave Uberuaga talked about, when you are

dealing with national registered historic structures, that automatically increases your cost. When you are dealing within the Federal

contracting arena, that automatically increases your costs.

One of my frustrations as member of the Board of Regents of the

University of Washington is having to deal within the structure of

State regulation and how that increases costs relative to the private sector. So I think the extent that we might think about how

those regulations impact the efficiency of our spending are important.

One of the areas the NPCA has been involved in that I think has

been generally welcomed by the Park Service is something they call

the Center for Park Management, which is actually using MBA

students as well as professionals, bringing them into the parks to

work alongside the Park Service staff to help identify areas of perspective enhancement to the efficiency of their spend.

You know, one of the examples I’ve heard at our board meetings

is about fleet maintenance and how you do that in a more efficient

basis compared to what the private sector might do. And I think

that there is—I have seen a complete openness on the part of the

Park Service to find better ways of doing things that are less expensive so that they can put resources where they need them most.

So, you know, this is not a situation where as a private citizen or

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a business person I’ve seen evidence of irresponsible spending. I

think that we have people that are scrambling to spend money as

wisely as they possibly conclude.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you.

Ms. JEWELL. Can I add something to your question earlier of Mr.

Dickenson? You talked about the irreversible damage. One of the

things that he didn’t mention, but I know, I’m sure, is in his mind,

is that of wildlife. When you put roads or you put motorized vehicles into areas that have previously not had traffic, it absolutely

impacts the wildlife habitat.

And when you are dealing with some critically endangered species which we have in a number of places, you run the risk of not

having that habitat sufficient to sustain those species, and that is

a reversible.

One of the things that I learned at the last NPCA board meeting

that I attended in Glacier National Park was really how much better job we’re doing in the United States relative to Canada on contiguous habitat for grizzly bears. And, of course, everybody is not

necessarily fond of grizzly bears, but as with so many other critical

indicator species, if they go, other things go as well. You’ve got, you

know, an increase in other populations which begins to impact the

wild and scenic areas. And I think Yellowstone is one which has

received a lot of attention——

Mr. DICKENSON. I appreciate that.

Ms. JEWELL. Yeah, the motorized traffic, even if it is not by putting in additional roads, but just putting access into some of that

back country, does have irreversible damage on the wildlife populations even if the natural environment might regenerate itself. I

think that’s just an important thing to add.

Mr. INSLEE. One comment. I think one of the reasons people are

so concerned about National Parks is that we have similar funding

issues in our recreational use in our Forest Service budget and others. There were two mountains I was going to go up this year, Mt.

Constance and Glacier Peak. Both of the roads to those places are

closed, and there are no plans that I’m aware of to re-open them

because of Forest Service funding issues to allow this recreational

access to national land.

At the same time, the current plan of the administration is to

scrap the roadless area rule which would allow the administration

to spend taxpayer subsidized dollars to go build logging roads to

clear cut in our most pristine national forest lands, at the same

time the Forest Service doesn’t keep existing roads open to get

hikers and fishers and hunters to go up to existing Federal lands,

and those roads are also used to access the national park. You go

into the Buck Horn Road and other roads, and they give you access

to the national park.

I just mention that because the problems we’re experiencing in the backlog, which is $11 billion, there’s an $11 billion backlog for

keeping recreational roads open in the Forest Service, and I just

think that’s an important point when we talk about how dire this

problem is.

Thank you.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Fleck wanted to say something. I’m not going to

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other hearing at another time, sir. But the big issue you raised

about the lower income people having access to the parks, that’s a

huge one. In my community, one out of four kids live in families

that meet the Federal poverty level, one out of four. That’s a huge

one. The park is all around us.

There’s some innovative things Olympic does when they have

their fee in place, when they don’t, that allow access to those parks.

For a lot of folks and having grown up in the Tri-Cities when

WPPSS failed, the parks were the place for those of us who didn’t

have money could go do things with our family. And so I really

think that is a tough one to crack, but it’s one of the most commendable ones to take on.

Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to comment briefly on Ms. Jewell’s comments relative to Mr. Dickenson’s. He made a really fascinating

point because I don’t think—we know for sure the management

plan isn’t going to survive the way it is. It’s just a question of what

it will look like.

And this irreversible argument is fascinating because it has been

underneath here for some time, and it is not an easy one to handle

because unless a species is so far gone and they have no habitat,

it is amazing how they bounce back. The grizzly bears are, in fact,

a good example of that and wolves are a good example of when you

reintroduce them, they do come back.

But if we have a different standard, then whether they theoretically could come back in 50 or 100 years, this will be an easier debate to have. Because even in the fish and wildlife law, I understand what you were driving at, if we get rid of the habitat, they’ll

leave different areas, but it’s amazing even in wetlands how habitat can come back if you concentrate on it and work on it. It’s just

far more expensive, it takes a long time, and you lose in the interim a question of the value.

But he put a little bit different spin on this because underneath

it, we’re always debating that fundamental question whenever

there’s a new housing development, whenever there’s a new anything in a community. And these are tough tradeoffs in the margin

of where the young people who love to hike and love to be in the

outdoors are increasingly looking at areas around the national forests and national parks, these zones, and even responsibility of the

cost to the taxpayer of forest fires when people go up against these

zones. It’s a huge, huge challenge.

I mean, sometimes—and in the end I have a different challenge.

We have 3 percent public lands counting township, counties and

State and Federal. It is a totally different challenge. And the way

many people look at it from Indiana is that we pay, send our tax

dollars that we work for out west so that then people can have nice

homes right up against all these forests and everything, and then

they catch fire, and we’re supposed to cover to rebuild their home

in, say, Malibu Canyon for the third time or other places, and then

our kids want to go out and live next to those forests, too, so we

lose the best of our areas.

And we have to figure out kind of where these interact areas are.

And it isn’t just a question of whether there’s irreversible damage,

it’s a question of how are we going to have logical buffer zones and

feeder zones with that.

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Mr. Reichert.

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Jewell, you mentioned the reduction of interpretive rangers

and the contracting. Do you know who the contract is with?

Ms. JEWELL. No. It was Yellowstone is what I was referring to.

That’s just personal experience. But I don’t know who the contractors were.

Mr. REICHERT. That would be a question for the first panel.

Ms. JEWELL. We can come up with the answer I’m sure through

NPCA.

Mr. REICHERT. OK. Do you know if there’s any arrangements

with the National Archives or the Smithsonian or Department of

Education partnershipping with the National Park Service as to

provide some of that educational opportunity? I just think that’s an

important piece that we need to focus on.

Ms. JEWELL. I don’t have an answer.

Mr. REICHERT. Does anyone on the panel know.

Mr. DICKENSON. There’s a long-term arrangement between the

National Park Service and the Library of Congress for the recording of historic structures which has been most valuable through the

years, I think well over 50 years.

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you.

Ms. JEWELL. I will get an answer to that, though, through NPCA

if there are any such arrangements and let you know.

Mr. SOUDER. Can I make a comment on that.

Mr. REICHERT. Sure. You are the chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Because one of the things that we need to look at,

which I have really stressed because it’s clear that the Park Service

is pretty effective at responding to local schools right around a

given park. But as I’ve watched through my daughter who is an

elementary school teacher, she was teaching third grade, and they

had a bat class, and she hooked up with the superintendent down

at Carlsbad Caverns who got her bat information, and she was able

to do that.

Well, the question is with the Internet now, and the Department

of Education ought to be taking a lead with this, how can they

make education more alive for kids like hooking up with the tremendous resources we have on volcanos right now, what happened

at Mt. St. Helen’s. You have a whole volcano row from Lawson to

Baker. You know, the history of how Lawson has come back versus

others that are kind of in between with Mt. St. Helen’s still smoking now, you know, how can this get integrated into our curriculum

shouldn’t have to be borne just by the Park Service, but they ought

to be interconnected. So I would love to work with you on that.

There are some, but interestingly it’s stove pipe. Just like we see

with Homeland Security stove pipe, it’s like education. It’s like

somebody does education in this and this and this and nobody is

interconnecting.

Ms. JEWELL. Can I just use an example here to illustrate this?

Because I think your point is very, very well taken. One of the critical things that REI has been working on for some time is how do

we connect kids back to the outdoors? And I think we all know

challenges of sedentary lifestyles, you know, distractions, video

games, over scheduling, whatever the reasons are that don’t get

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kids playing outside or appreciating nature, this is a critical issue

going forward in the parks.

If we don’t make them attractive and they don’t—whether it’s

through their schools or otherwise, don’t have the experiences that

we had, we aren’t going to have the advocates for the future.

So for Russ’s great grandson, that’s amazing, and others, if they

aren’t having a positive experience so they aren’t having something

that engages them, whether it is a ranger or whether it is a school

teacher, we’re in trouble.

One of the things that we’ve done at REI is take a backpack that

is chalk full of curriculum and Leave No Trace principles and take

it out to schools. We’ll touch 50,000 children just with our employees going out to school to teach Leave No Trace principles.

And I think those kinds of efforts that are going on will make

a difference, and I think that the parks have been very willing to

work with us and with others in engaging youth groups.

I took a young woman up to do some back country camping on

Mt. Rainier, and there were 100 Boy Scouts up there at that time.

And they are allowed into the park to participate in winter camping experiences in exchange for doing volunteer service projects

there in the summertime.

So those are the kinds of things that I do think go on that stretch

those resources to young people, and I think to the extent the National Parks would work with outside organizations, that would

just supplement that.

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you. I just think that is so important. And

Mr. Fleck’s question or response to a question on, you know, how

low income families or lower income families may be to enjoy the

parks reminded me of the days that my family of nine rode to Mt.

Rainier and were accessed to the park for free, and it was a place

that we could go as a low income family. Great memories and a

great opportunity for us to learn.

And that brings me to Mr. Dickenson’s comments. I thought that

you spoke with a lot of passion and a lot of feeling, and you can

tell that you enjoyed your career very, very much. Even though the

challenges were there, of course, you had great experience not just

with history, but you speak with a lot of wisdom, and the people

in this room and the people on this panel certainly should pay close

attention to the words that you shared with us today.

I identified with your remarks to a certain degree having been

a sheriff in this county for 8 years and having to make those $1

to $2 million cuts to a $110 million budget a year and trying to

prioritize your resources and really what is your core business

function and how do you provide those things like interpretive

rangers or school resource officers or DARE officers where the connections through our young people are so critical.

And to me, that’s been a passion, and I know the people in the

community know that, you know, working with Green River and

working with kids on the street, prostitutes and kids on drugs, they

need to get out into our parks and see what this world is about

other than the streets of downtown mega cities across our country.

I want to just take the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to share a

story that I think really draws it to the point Mr. Inslee was also

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making is what kind of vision should we really have for our National Park System and preserving our parks.

I don’t have a great grandson yet, sir, but I have six grandchildren, and my oldest grandson will soon turn 11, and his sister

is 8. And a few years ago, I think they were 7 and 5, and we were

on the east side of the mountains, and we were walking through

an area that was sort of a high desert area. It was in the spring,

and the snow was beginning to melt. And as we walked, they were

holding my hands. And I just have to share this story. I’m sorry.

I’m proud of my grand kids, too, but it’s just a picture of really

what we need to preserve here.

And if you can imagine a grandfather and a 7-year-old grandson

and a 5-year-old granddaughter. I know you can. And some of you

in the audience, I see there’s a few of you out there, and as we’re

walking through the snow that is melting and bare patches of

grass, we come along a track of some deer, a couple of deer. And

so we stop, and we point out the deer track, and the excitement

in their face, their eyes, you know, get wide and bright and excited

because there’s a possibility we could see a deer.

And so I pointed it out, and I said, ‘‘Let’s go on. Let’s see if we

can find a deer.’’ And they said, ‘‘Yeah, let’s go on.’’ So we walked

a few feet further, and around this—it was sagebrush, and we

came across another track that all of a sudden joined the deer

track, and it looked to me like it was either a bobcat or a cougar.

And so we stopped, and I said, ‘‘You know this, Caleb, Timmery,

this looks like it could be the track of a big cat,’’ you know. Their

first thought was big kitty cat, and I said, ‘‘No, this is like a cougar, you know.’’ And I said, ‘‘But let’s go on.’’

And I tried to move forward, and they are stuck in the snow.

They aren’t going anywhere. And my grandson tugs at my right

arm, and he says, ‘‘Papa, correct me if I’m wrong,’’ and this is a

quote, I never talked like this when I was his age, believe me, ‘‘correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t cougar eat deer?’’ And I said, ‘‘Yes,

Caleb, they do.’’

And so we walked or I tried to. I said, ‘‘We should go. We should

move, go on.’’ He yanks back on my hand one more time, and he

said, ‘‘Papa, do you really think it wise we continue on?’’

And it’s just—I tell that story often to groups because I do think

it wise we continue on. This is a tough problem we have ahead of

us. And I really appreciate so much both panels being here today

and the work that you do. And I know everyone in this room has

a passion for this and a great desire to see that we preserve our

lands for the enjoyment of our kids, our grand kids and my great

grand kids eventually, sir, and congratulations on your great career.

And I just wanted to tell the community here since we’re in the

8th District that I’m committed to this project, too. I am committed

to protecting our lands here, and, as you can see, the panel members are all quite passionate about this. And it’s just an honor to

be here today, and I thank you so much for your help and everything.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I want to just do a few more questions

here before we finish up so I can make sure I get a couple of these

things right.

First, I thank you for your work with NPCA. There are lots of

different groups with lobbyists, but the key thing is to get accurate

information and comprehensive data. And I very much appreciate

their involvement with these hearings and with the data on the hill

with the Parks Caucus, and the testimony you gave today will just

be very helpful.

Each year we come out with a hearing book, and we’re going to

do a final year end report like they do. Ours will have the official

congressional report, and we can work together, but thank you for

your work with that, too, because I know having come from the

business community, you never know when you get mail from all

these different groups which ones are actually working and which

ones are mostly raising money. They have been a tremendous help.

One of the problems, I wanted to ask Mr. Malmberg this and

then Mr. Dickenson, one of the problems we have is no matter

what we do here, let it be even in working with the Centennial Act,

it won’t be enough money that there are going to be serious structural changes in how we do things. The Park Service is already

probably the most contracted out agency in the Federal Government. We’re clearly using supplementary funds, that the same

thing that is hitting Northwest Airlines and every airlines and GE

and Ford and GM are both struggling with pensions and how to

deal with healthcare costs. As a society, we just plain make more

promises than we can meet given the economic growth.

The Park Service has been systematically getting better at kind

of an architectural inventory, a cultural resources inventory, trying

to do core ops, trying to do different things of how do we prioritize

because one of the problems is that the only management problem

I have ever seen is lack of willingness sometimes to make hard decisions because everything is important. And if everything is important, nothing is important.

And how are we going to do this? I’m on the board of the Indiana

Landmarks, and one of my frustrations is that if you say every old

bridge needs to be preserved, every old school needs to be preserved, the cost to do this right is about impossible.

At the Lewis & Clark sites, I got to see the archeological site. Archaeology is one of the things that gets kicked out early. And, quite

frankly, if we don’t do the archaeology, 50 years from now we may

decide something was important that we didn’t do at the time, as

we have learned from some of the world’s most famous archeological sites that these things tend to go over the top of each other.

And it is one of the hardest to sell.

Then the next thing is the buildings which is a huge problem because if every building has to be preserved in the way it was originally made and every building is deemed archaeologically significant, there’s just no way that we’re going to be able to keep up.

I mean, whether it’s trying to keep up adobe buildings or how to

preserve Native American things, then this also leads to the question of do we focus on a particular era theme at a park, what is

its primary and what is its secondary?

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We just saw this on the Lexington Concord Road that the Park

Service in trying to make it somewhat similar, you get into all

kinds of questions here. There weren’t any trees, they had cut

down the trees to farm, so now if you cut down all the trees on the

Lexington Concord Road, much like at Gettysburg, people will holler because it’s mostly really a bike path right now. Most people

who are using that park are using it as a bike trail not to try to,

you know, see the Lexington Concord. What is the park mission

here?

Furthermore, they have now wound up with a bunch of buildings

that are historically significant, but weren’t there with the mission

of the park, and yet they have to use the same kind of nails, the

same kind of window panes, the same kind of paint to try to redo

this.

And what I fear will happen with this Centennial Bill is if we

don’t kind of figure out, OK, which ones are going to be maintained

at the purest level, which ones are we going to maintain at a mid

level, and which ones are we going to just basically let go to rot,

what we’re going to do here and NPCA, and we have discussed this

intensively, even in trying to address the operating as opposed to

backlog, the danger here is people are going to say add nothing,

which is the position of the Park Service.

Basically, for the last 8 years they’ve opposed every new proposal

we came up with, didn’t like the Lewis & Clark proposal initially,

particularly at the Washington side or for that matter the trail because we have a backlog, we can’t keep our personnel here, why

should we add that?

Angel Island is a huge challenge. Here’s arguably the Ellis Island

for the Asian area. The State of California hasn’t put the funds in.

It’s falling down. If the Federal Government doesn’t intervene, it

may not be there.

Plus the whole new concept, which Lewis & Clark is a classic example of, the historic example is a contiguous kind of solid park together as opposed to five different, say, historical, cultural or some

green space which is really what’s happening more east of the Mississippi because most of the funds in the Park Service have been

dedicated to the west.

Now you see a rising desire for this in the east, which is somewhat compromised in a sense of environmentally compromised

land, sites that aren’t necessarily contiguous and to try to buy up

the land in between is impossible. And we’re going to lose those

sites if they are built over. It’s not irreversible. You can always

tear down 50-story buildings, but you are not likely to, or huge

condo developments.

But how do we, in effect, make these decisions on the archaeology, on preservation of the building and the prioritization of the

land?

And I wanted to ask you, Mr. Malmberg, because clearly, and I’m

going to raise the second part of this with Mr. Dickenson, and that

should be the last of my questions, but we’ll see, because in Washington State, and Oregon less so because they appear to have a

fund built in for their parks a little different than others, but I saw

this in the California Redwoods, we are increasingly doing more

partnerships and let me describe this as it now ties in with the

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first, at California Redwoods, the Redwoods are actually predominantly State parks and were there before the Federal Government

got involved. The Federal Government interconnected in between.

When we started this process, the Federal Government had a few

rangers and the State was the dominant. Now there’s 120, I believe, NPS employees, and we’re down to 20 State employees.

The State has lowered and lowered, much like you were worried

about the private sector being replaced. What in fact has happened

is the States are not keeping up proportionately even with the Federal increases.

You talked about the additional money coming in in the State of

Washington, but this is going to be a challenge as we look at the

Washington side of the State park, that as we look at California,

another thing that has happened is the State, the Federal boundary line is drawn around Redwoods, but the State has added some

more watershed area.

Now that the Federal Government is taking about, what, 80 percent of the staff there, the Federal rangers can’t go in to protect

this watershed area, and it’s not in the Redwood park.

But since most of the people are now Federal people, what we’ve

come to understand is if we say we’re just going to deal with backlog, we’re just going to deal with the current staff, what has happened is we’ve all understood more that, hey, the watersheds to our

existing parks are pretty critical, and not everybody has forest land

up against them, and we’re going to have to get more buffers, and

it is very hard to get this into the National Park.

I’m raising a number of these things because, as you know, as

you told me and as I have been told earlier, the State of Washington has five interpretive rangers in the State is my understanding,

and you’ve got them all. And three of them are at Lewis and Clark.

Are they going to stay at Lewis and Clark? Is the State, now that

we have a partnership and this is a national park, is the State also

going to come up to the table or are those going to get transferred

out after the anniversary is over, and the Federal Government is

going to do it?

How are we really going to work these partnerships? How are we

going to partner and prioritize? Because as you are digging those

archeological sites there to move the area, we’re finding other

things. And there’s a couple of sites there, the one on your coin,

that’s a Washington site that is on private land that you are distributing a nickel, isn’t it, to the whole world, and people are going

to want to go see it, and they can’t?

Now, I understand that this needs to be worked out long term,

and I know this is not something probably anybody from Washington wanted me to raise, but at some point that needs to be worked

through so people can go through there.

But if you are adding new land, I’m raising that this has another

complexity because we don’t want to kind of freeze the Park Service, and yet what we’re saying is we don’t have enough money to

freeze the Park Service, even with the additional money, but we

are going to always have new things, and how are we going to deal

with this? And I just kind of wanted to pick your brain.

Mr. MALMBERG. That was a very long question.

Mr. SOUDER. It was a short question. It was a long buildup.

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Mr. MALMBERG. Well, unfortunately, the State park systems

have emulated the national park system in a number of ways and

deferred maintenance or maintenance backlog is also a major problem in our agency, as I’m sure it is in Oregon, too.

We’re continually looking at different ways to keep these funded.

If you want to specifically talk about Lewis & Clark State and national historic sites since that is in my region, I can very well tell

you we are not looking at dropping out because the National Park

Service has come in to help us run the park.

Cape Disappointment is one of the largest parks in our State system. It happens to earn enough revenue to support itself at this

point. We put a million dollars into that Lewis & Clark interpretive

center. We don’t look like we are going to back out and say, ‘‘OK.

Now you can send people over.’’

What we’re looking at is trying to provide, as we said, a seamless

service because the public doesn’t understand the difference between my flat hats and the National Park Service flat hats. They

don’t understand the difference between the arrowhead logo and

our logo and Oregon State Parks logo. All they want is to come to

enjoy the resources, have a good time, spend time with their grandkids, and we’re committed to that.

And the nickel that you mentioned that has an ocean view happens to be a view of Cape Disappointment, which happens to be

under my management, so you can get onto it.

Mr. SOUDER. My understanding is the land where the view is

from is privately held, and it’s not even clear precisely where that

is, but either choice is privately held.

Mr. MALMBERG. You can take a picture, and I can get you into

the spot where you can take that picture. But, yes, and we are continually looking at buying that. We just bought about 20 acres in

that particular area to add to that park, so we’re committed to

that.

But we also have the same problem of deciding what’s important.

Which one of your children do you give up to raise the other one

up to maturity? It’s a tough—it’s tough. You just asked the toughest question in any kind of parks management because there are

no resources that are worth it.

Mr. SOUDER. So you wouldn’t, and, Mr. Dickenson, maybe you

can address that, so you wouldn’t, say, prioritize under the Antiquities Act, the Landmarks Act or so on and just say some of these

things are higher priority?

I mean, to some degree the Park Service is doing that, but to

some degree you are mandated to protect everything once it

reaches a certain year. It’s just a matter of——

Mr. DICKENSON. Well, there’s some leeway. Just as an aside, I

might mention that when I became director, there had been a recent surge in authorization of new areas, a very dramatic surge,

and so there was essentially during my time a 5-year moratorium

on adding new areas to the system in order to, what we call, catch

up, to use the resources in the best possible manner.

Every time that you authorize a new area for the system, that

impacts every other unit within the existing system, and if the

budget doesn’t take into account the arrival of this new child, well,

then, somebody has to pay the price.

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Now, I think the system must expand. There’s always a need to

honor the achievements of our fellow citizens, our heroes and heroines, and so in the historical field, the cultural field particularly,

there’s room for growth as the years go on in order to recognize the

flow of history.

I have a personal belief that most of the outstanding nationally

significant natural areas in the United States have been recognized. And I would think that Congress ought to look pretty carefully at any new proposal to add new areas. There are other—I

would have to be convinced personally that there is a high degree

of national significance and no other agency in a position to provide

the kind of sensitive oversight that needs to be given to these

areas.

Regarding how you make judgments regarding what you preserve and what you do not or to what degree do you say you are

going to preserve, this is a judgment that has to be made by a thorough study of the historical personage or background. Every outhouse doesn’t need to be saved on Mt. Vernon, for example. The

same is true in any unit of the system where you have cultural resources. Judgments have to be made as to whether you will give

it the highest degree of protection faithful to history, faithful to the

architectural values or whether there shall be elimination.

Historical property can be exposed of depending on the kind of

advice that you receive from the professionals or benign neglect.

It’s perfectly within the purview, I think, of the managers that

serve to make these kind of judgments with professional advice.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me followup on one thing on the additional

land. An argument could be made that of the crown jewel parks,

they were pretty well done like in the 40’s with a few exceptions,

that past the crown jewels, you get into a now more difficult question, and then you get to the next tier, and the same thing could

be said of cultural arts, Gettysburg versus the home of an artist

or the Longfellow house where it was both Longfellow’s and Washington’s headquarters, but it’s been altered multiple times, and you

have one house inside of another house, that part of the political

problem is that, bluntly put, I don’t believe the State parks have

in fact kept up with the National Parks. I don’t believe that’s a

fact, that we’ve increased the Federal funding at a faster rate nationally taken over 10 or 20 years than the State parks.

Back in the days of Roosevelt and others, Indiana, Iowa, a few

other States were at the cutting edge, and you had a phenomenal

State park system in the country. And if you look at the additional

units to the State parks in the United States, it is far less than

the additions to the units of the Federal park proportionally.

And what has happened is that has put more pressure on the national park system to pick up things that are regionally significant

because if they aren’t doing it, there won’t be any green space.

So what may have been a second tier green space in terms of

looking at it compared to Rainier, it’s the only green space left, and

it’s very expensive in the east, and this is a political challenge that

many of my Republican colleagues from the west who always complain about the Federal Government approach and how much Federal land they have, so I, when Chairman Hansen was head of the

committee, proposed that 67 percent of any new dollars go east of

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the Mississippi and challenged some of my western colleagues to

say, ‘‘Look, we’ll take the money.’’ They decided initially they were

kind of leaning toward it, but then the sagebrush rebellion wasn’t

that much of a sagebrush rebellion. They liked the money.

But the rug hits the road almost every week right now in Congress with something coming up from the floor. At the Brandywine

Battlefield, the heart of the battlefield was going to be donated by

a convent, not donated, but was going to sell at about one fourth

the market value. It was going to be sold to a condo developer, and

we would never have it. It also happened to be some of the only

green space contiguous to the Wyath and then I think there’s a fish

and wildlife area to keep some open space in suburban Philadelphia.

This is the kind of real world tradeoff we’re making. It’s a historic site. The Brandywine was not—it was important, but not

overwhelmingly important. We had a headquarters. We had some

other stuff. Yes, it was the heart of what was a sprawling battlefield, but it’s also green space. Now, historically that might have

been a State park, but the State doesn’t do anything about it. It

would have just been built over. And yet the majority of Congress,

in fact, lies east of the Mississippi.

My friend Jim Ridenour tried to come up with national recreation areas or heritage areas, I should say, to try to head this off.

You’ve got a moratorium, the moratorium is about to end, and so

he says, ‘‘OK. Let’s stop this park barreling, you guys, by putting

heritage areas in.’’

Now what happens is we have, I think it is, 40 some heritage

areas that we’ve authorized in Congress, and they can only manage

eight a year in a study over the Park Service.

And, literally, we’re going to have 200 heritage areas where the

Park Service is going to have to put their sign up, where they are

going to have to have their staff there, but won’t have any control

over it because, guess what, the same demand that started with

the park in Oklahoma, with Mackinac Island, with the hot springs

in Arkansas. They may not have been if you look at the first five

things in the Park Service. One of them is out, one of them has

been reduced and Mackinac Island is back to a State park, that

park barreling and adding additional things started from the beginning is just not going to stop.

So the question is how do we accommodate what is a—whether

it’s the State’s issue, whether it’s other types of things, I know the

heritage areas are one way and the recreation areas are another.

I mean, another dilemma we have in looking at this is Santa

Monica, Gateway and Golden Gate have 12 to 14 million visitors

a year compared to—what does Mt. Rainier have, 3?

Ms. JEWELL. 1.2.

Mr. SOUDER. 1.2. So the people are voting with their feet. Now,

the interesting phenomenon here, as Brian O’Neal challenges everybody to point out, is that furthermore if you take the 100—I

think it’s the 120-mile radius around Yosemite, more people go to

Golden Gate from farther than 120 miles away than go to Yosemite, yet we think of Yosemite as people take one trip, but it’s mostly

used by locals.

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It’s because New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco are the biggest convention centers and tourist areas in the United States, so

people go over to a unit of the park.

Even our concept of what are the crown jewels not in an environmental sense, but in exposing people to it, where are the Hispanics

going to go to the parks? It’s not likely that in the first generation,

it’s going to be Yellowstone. Some will. But it’s going to be like San

Antonio missions where they are not even going to see the missions, but they’re having a picnic there. And the Park Service is

trying to figure out that 90 percent of the people in their park are

having a picnic and then they go over and see the missions. These

are in our core challenge of who we are and how we fund this.

That said, I just wonder if you have a reaction to that? Because

you are in the middle of this. You saw this in effect. Now that the

Bush administration is in, like Reagan, they basically wanted to

have a moratorium on any new lands, and it isn’t working. And,

therefore, all we do is add more units and not increase the funding

enough.

Mr. DICKENSON. The development of the urban recreation system

in New York City and San Francisco just essentially in my view

came about because of the failure of the cities to provide recreation.

They were looking for an alternative. The Federal Government

gave them that alternative. That’s not to say that there haven’t

been some good results and some real benefits derived from the

urban recreation concept system.

Georgia, for example, has a marvelous downtown largely natural

Chattahoochee River. The benefits that flow from that are tremendous. But the question was then and I guess still is, is that a proper responsibility of the Federal Government and the National Park

Service to run that sort of thing, especially when you are dealing

with a very prized possession. The National Parks have been called

crown jewels, and why that is is because they are so unique. There

is nothing unique about downtown Atlanta. And I will probably

hear from that.

And Golden Gate and San Francisco have marvelous assembling

of recreation. But in the long run, is that a proper responsibility

of the National Park Service and the Federal Government versus

the row of the city? That’s a pretty fundamental question there.

But you might say it’s already been decided, but there hasn’t

been any expansion of that concept now for over 20 years. So at

least you would think that somebody has given some consideration

to it.

If you dilute it, if you dilute the National Park System by putting

in what might be called inferior, substandard or not nationally

qualified areas, you can destroy it because it’s a concept in the

mind of the American people that makes the National Park System

such a success, the idea that this is unique. There’s only one Grand

Canyon. There is only one Yellowstone. There is only one Mt.

Rainier, per se, and so on.

And if you dilute this by bringing in what I won’t call substandard areas, but areas which ought to be managed by others

perhaps, and put this on the National Park Service, I think it

weakens the entire system.

100

Mr. SOUDER. All right. I appreciate those comments. It’s a huge

question. My friend Congressman Markey from Massachusetts,

every time he puts in an oil derrick in the Arctic National Refuge,

I always ask him the question because I don’t think it’s correct that

there’s been no new concepts.

One of the new concepts was the Boston Islands National Park

area where the Federal Government owns nothing, and inside of

that is Logan Airport. And I asked him whether he wants to remove Logan Airport from the national park because their city

sewer system is in the national park area, their airport is in the

national park area. It does have the first lighthouse, but that is

under the Coast Guard, and it has a fort that is under the State,

but it was put into the Park Service, basically, to try to get an excuse to do an environmental cleanup.

Now, those islands are beautiful, and they could be restored, but

they are not going to take these back to pristine standard of even

Yellowstone because you have a big city around it with their airport in it and their sewer system in it and big oil distribution tanks

in it, yet it’s now part of what’s a new term, the only one I believe

in our service, called a National Park Area.

We are also increasingly getting national park reserves, which is

another new term to basically try to manage and to expand to try

to keep people farming next to a park to try to keep high rises out

so we pay through the Park Service kind of a sustaining thing

which is a variation of what we have done which is really proliferating because we can’t afford to add the land, but we work with

nature conservancy with these kind of things.

And this is going to continue to evolve, but these are the real

world things we are trying to deal with in the budget is every time

you do a heritage area, every time you do a park area, if we say

we’re increasing funds at 3 percent, but the payroll is increasing

at 7, and then we add all these new areas, this doesn’t work unless

we change something internally and/or get more money from outside.

All that to say, I don’t think you have to worry about substitution of funds. We have some really structural problems that we’re

trying to deal with, partly because people love the parks so much

they want everything to be a national park. And then unless the

State and local try to help with this, we’re in a whole heap of trouble.

Mr. DICKENSON. There’s a couple of things I want to add. I worry

about the impact of commercialism as a reason for establishing a

park, and while this has not been blatantly done in recent years,

at one point in our history, one of the things that local groups

pushed the Congress is to establish areas because they had an impact upon the local economy. And that leaves the door open for less

than nationally significant areas coming into the system.

We haven’t seen much of that in recent times and thank goodness because that really could be the death of the system as far as

I’m concerned. You have to have those high standards maintained,

and if the standard of service at the areas themselves that are already established isn’t up to snuff, the public is turned off, and the

value of the national park system for people in the United States

is simply going to go down when that happens.

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Mr. SOUDER. Maybe we can mix some of the dark brown with

some of the light brown, and that will really start a political battle.

Mr. INSLEE. Just commenting, there is a unique place in my district on Bainbridge Island. It’s the first place in the United States

where Japanese American citizens of the United States were interned by the Executive order of the President. We have an effort

now to add a very small park to the Minidoka or other complex National Park Service.

When that happens, Mr. Dickenson, I hope you will join us when

that—at the celebration where I can honor your service when we

finally get that done.

First, I want to thank Mr. Chairman. I want to tell—Mr.

Reichert told one story. I just want to tell one story in parting. My

dad was working on Mt. Rainier in the SCA program back in the

60’s, and they were going to build an outhouse facility. And, of

course, a quick way to do that is with dynamite rather than shovels, of course.

And so they were using some dynamite. And my dad said, ‘‘Well,

let’s just throw in an extra stick there and get this done fast.’’ So

they threw an extra stick in, and, of course, they didn’t think properly because they had the outhouse, a very nicely constructed outhouse, and they had actually sawn from timber they had taken

down themselves, and, of course, they blew out the outhouse.

And I just tell that story because I think you can be confident

we’re going to take a renewed effort not to blow up the Park Service budget, not to destroy our National Parks, and we are going to

do everything we can to make sure of this fulfillment for future

generations, and we are going to be fiscally responsible in doing it.

No one has brought up the fact we have a $400 billion deficit

today. There’s no money in Washington, DC. We’re going to make

sure there’s money available to take care of these parks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. REICHERT. I would just add one thing. Thank you to Mr.

Chairman for holding this hearing and again thank you to all of

you for being here.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank all of you. I mean, it’s interesting even in

New Orleans, I think it’s the John Recede Park, took a pretty bad

beating, but yet as you look at what they were trying to do out

there, much like in the Everglades, if you destroy some of the ecosystem, the floods can hit the city quicker. And it’s going to be interesting to see even the Park Service pressure on trying to rehab

four parks down there in New Orleans that they are trying to put

together. And we’re still getting the inventory.

But ironically the Park Service and/or other Federal Government

may have to look at the wetland system going into New Orleans

as a buffer, and those kind of things were never asked of the Park

Service years ago.

Mr. DICKENSON. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you each for your testimony and your time.

The subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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