By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON -- Although the White House says it has put billions of dollars toward reducing the list of overdue maintenance projects on national park buildings, the price tag of still-needed repairs never seems to shrink.
A government auditor told a Senate panel Tuesday that is because the National Park Service can only guess at how many buildings are under its care and what shape those structures are in.
"The Park Service backlog is a moving target; it's just a guesstimate that is not based on any inventory," Barry Hill of the General Accounting Office told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "Congress is asking the right questions, that if we put $2.9 billion into dealing with this backlog why does the number keep staying and floating around [$5 billion]? There's really no accountability right now."
Park Service officials said they are completing a new inventory that will accurately reflect the condition of park facilities and that the Bush administration has done more to fix dilapidated park facilities than previous administrations.
"We are doing what should have been done years ago," said National Park Service Deputy Director Donald Murphy. "The money we are spending is accountable to you, and we can show you where it's gone."
President Bush has proposed spending $3.8 billion over the next five years on building repairs and $1.26 billion over the same period for road maintenance in national parks. One of the Utah projects highlighted in the president's park-maintenance plan for 2004 is the replacement and expansion of Bryce Canyon National Park's Sunset Point restrooms and renovating a nearby picnic facility at the popular spot overlooking the famed red rock spires.
Last week, Interior Secretary Gale Norton presented Bush a progress report showing that from 2002 to 2004, $2.9 billion has been spent to reduce $4.9 billion in deferred maintenance and repairs needed in national parks. But Tuesday, when Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, asked Murphy if that meant the backlog cost now stands at $2 billion, Murphy replied he wasn't "even going to go down that road."
"We are saying we have spent $2.9 billion addressing what we understand the current snapshot of the backlog to have been at a point in time," he said. "People made their best guess at the time and that number was $4.9 billion."
Within two years, the Park Service will have converted to a computer program used by other federal agencies that more accurately accounts for the condition of the 18,000 permanent structures, 4,400 housing units, 700 water and sewer systems and other assets at the nation's 388 national parks. Murphy said the facility-management software will provide Congress precise data of the most pressing overdue repairs and construction needs in the parks.
"In the past, we really haven't had a very objective and systematic way of establishing priorities," Murphy said.
The president of a national park watchdog group said while he is encouraged by the efforts being made by the White House and Park Service to gain ground on overdue fix-up chores, more needs to be done.
"We had high hopes at the beginning of this administration, but have been disappointed by the administration's failure to come close to increasing the rate of investment to the extent necessary to significantly reduce and ultimately eliminate the backlog," said Tom Kiernan of the National Parks and Conservation Association.