The national park system has 376 units. These units have, among other things, over 16,000 permanent structures, 8,000 miles of roads, 1,500 bridges and tunnels, 5,000 housing units, about 1,500 water and waste systems, 200 radio systems, and over 400 dams. According to the Park Service, these facilities are valued at over $35 billion. The proper care and maintenance of the national parks and their supporting infrastructure are essential to the continued use and enjoyment of our great national treasures by this and future generations. However, for years Park Service officials have highlighted the agency’s inability to keep up with its maintenance needs. In this connection, Park Service officials and others have often cited a continuing buildup of unmet maintenance needs as evidence of deteriorating conditions throughout the national park system. The accumulation of these unmet needs has become commonly referred to by the Park Service as its “maintenance backlog.” The reported maintenance backlog has increased significantly over the past 10 years—from $1.9 billion in 1987 to about $6.1 billion in 1997. Recently, concerns about the maintenance backlog within the National Park Service, as well as other federal land management agencies, have led the Congress to provide significant new sources of funding. These additional sources of funding are, in part, aimed at helping the agencies address their maintenance problems. For example, it is anticipated that new revenues from the 3-year recreational fee demonstration program will provide the Park Service over $100 million annually. In some cases, the new revenues will as much as double the amount of money available for operating individual park units. In addition, $10 million from a special one-time appropriation from the Land and Water Conservation Fund has been made available for use by the Park Service in fiscal year 1998 to address the maintenance backlog. These new revenue sources are in addition to the $300 million in annual operating appropriations that are used for maintenance activities within the agency. In 1997, the Park Service estimated that its maintenance backlog was about $6.1 billion. Maintenance is generally considered to be work done to keep assets—property, plant, and equipment—in acceptable condition. Maintenance includes normal repairs and the replacement of parts and structural components needed to preserve assets. However, the composition of the maintenance backlog estimate provided by the Park Service includes activities that go beyond what could be considered maintenance. Specifically, the Park Service’s estimate of its maintenance backlog includes not only repair and rehabilitation projects for existing facilities but also projects for the construction of new facilities or upgrades of present facilities. Of the estimated $6.1 billion maintenance backlog, most of it—about $5.6 billion, or about 92 percent—is for construction projects. These projects, such as building roads and utility systems, are relatively large, normally exceed $500,000 each, and involve multiyear planning and construction activities. According to the Park Service, the projects are intended to meet the following objectives: (1) repair and rehabilitation; (2) resource protection, involving such things as constructing or rehabilitating historic structures and trails and erosion protection activities; (3) health and safety, involving such things as upgrading water and sewer systems; (4) new facilities in older existing parks; and (5) new facilities in new and developing parks. Table 1 shows the dollar amounts and percentage of funds pertaining to each of the objectives. The Park Service’s list of projects in the construction portion of the maintenance backlog reveals that over 21 percent, or $1.2 billion, of the $5.6 billion is for new facilities. We visited four parks to review the projects listed in the Park Service’s maintenance backlog and found that the estimates included new construction projects as part of the backlog estimate. For example: Acadia National Park’s estimate included $16.6 million to replace a visitor center and construct a park entrance. Colonial National Historical Park’s estimate included $24 million to build a bicycle and walking trail along the Colonial Parkway. Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area’s estimate included $19.2 million to build a visitor center and rehabilitate facilities. Rocky Mountain National Park’s estimate included $2.4 million to upgrade entrance facilities. While we do not question the need for any of these facilities, the projects are directed at adding new facilities or modifying and improving existing facilities to meet the objectives that park managers wish to achieve for their parks. These projects are not aimed at addressing the maintenance of existing facilities within the parks. For example, Colonial National Historical Park proposed to construct a new bicycle and walking trail on the 23-mile route along the Colonial Parkway between Jamestown and Yorktown, Virginia. The reason for the trail is to enhance bikers’, joggers’, and walkers’ experience in the park and to increase safety for motorists and nonmotorists. The proposed project to upgrade facilities at Rocky Mountain National Park consists of constructing four new employee housing units and a 5,000-square-foot visitor center to provide information on park facilities and resources. According to the park’s records, half of the 2.8 million visitors to the park enter via Fall River, an entrance road with no established information station or visitor center until visitors reach Fall River Pass, a distance of 21 miles. Including these types of enhancement projects in the maintenance backlog contributes to confusion about the actual maintenance needs of the national park system. While a portion of the projects listed as part of the Park Service’s maintenance backlog are not maintenance items, it is clear from documentation and physical evidence that we noted at the parks that we visited that the Park Service does have a host of maintenance needs. For example, Acadia National Park proposed to spend over $2 million to rehabilitate historic bridges along the carriage road system that have been saturated by water and exhibit cracks, open joints, and waterborne deposits. Also, Rocky Mountain National Park proposed to spend $14.5 million to rehabilitate and replace park roads. On one road, we observed that the road bank was eroding and in need of rocks to rebuild the eroded area. (See fig. 1.) In addition to projects clearly listed as new construction, other projects on the $5.6 billion list that are not identified as new construction, such as the repair and rehabilitation of existing facilities, include amounts for new construction. Our review of the project proposals for the four parks that we visited showed that each of the proposals included large repair and rehabilitation projects containing tasks that would not be considered maintenance. These projects include new construction for adding, expanding, and upgrading facilities. For example, at Colonial National Historical Park, an $18 million project to protect Jamestown Island and other locations from erosion included about $4.7 million primarily for the construction of new items such as buildings, boardwalks, wayside exhibits, and an audio exhibit. Beyond construction items, the remaining part of the $6.1 billion backlog estimate—about 8 percent, or about $500 million—is for smaller maintenance projects, such as rehabilitating campgrounds and trails and repairing bridges, and other items that recur on a cyclic basis, for example reroofing or repainting buildings. The Park Service excluded daily, routine park-based operational maintenance, such as janitorial and custodial services, groundskeeping, and minor repairs, from the maintenance backlog figures. The Park Service has a maintenance management system that park managers can use to plan and manage these routine activities. However, recent Department of the Interior Inspector General report notes that this system is not uniformly used by park managers. The Park Service compiles its maintenance backlog estimates on an ad hoc basis in response to requests from the Congress or others; it does not have a routine, systematic process for determining its maintenance backlog. The January 1997 estimate of the maintenance backlog—the most recent estimate—was based largely on information that was compiled over 4 years ago. This fact, as well as the absence of a common definition of what should be included in the maintenance backlog, contributed to an inaccurate and out-of-date estimate. The $6.1 billion estimate, dated January 1997, was for the most part, compiled on the basis of information received from the individual parks in December 1993. A Park Service official said that the 1993 data were updated by headquarters to reflect projects that had been subsequently funded during the intervening years. However, we found that the Service’s most recent maintenance backlog estimate for each of the parks we visited was neither accurate nor current. The four parks’ estimates of their maintenance needs ranged from about $40 million at Rocky Mountain National Park to $120 million at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Our analysis of these estimates showed that they varied from the headquarters estimates by about $3 million and $21 million, respectively. The differences occurred because the estimates from headquarters were based primarily on 4-year-old data. Officials from the four parks told us that they had not been asked to provide specific updated data to develop the 1997 estimate. The parks’ estimates, which were based on current information, included such things as recent projects, modified scopes, and more up-to-date cost estimates. For example, Acadia’s estimate to replace the visitor center and construct a park entrance has been reduced from $16.6 million to $11.6 million; the Delaware Water Gap’s estimate of $19.2 million to build a visitor center and rehabilitate facilities has been reduced to $8 million; and Rocky Mountain’s $2.4 million project to upgrade an entrance facility is no longer a funding need because it is being paid for through private means. In addition, one of the projects on the headquarters list has been completed. The Park Service has no common definition as to what items should be included in an estimate of the maintenance backlog.