The top Republican and Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee have reached a deal to pay for billions of dollars of repairs and maintenance in national parks.
Reps. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, and Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., will introduce legislation Wednesday to pay for repairs with money the government collects from the development of oil, natural gas, wind, and solar energy on public lands.
The introduction of the bill is significant because Bishop and Grijalva, who usually spar on public lands issues, agreed to a compromise that is somewhat similar to a Trump administration proposal to fund the Interior Department’s $16 billion maintenance backlog.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke earlier this year proposed creating the Public Lands Infrastructure Fund of up to $18 billion over 10 years for maintenance and improvements in national parks, wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Indian Education schools. The money would come from royalty payments and lease sales on federal onshore and offshore lands.
The proposal earned bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, as members were eager to see a funding mechanism to fix pipeline leaks, broken bathrooms, and potholed roads at America’s beloved national parks.
Of the $16 billion backlog, the National Park Service has the largest repair need — $11.6 billion in 2017 for the nation’s 417 national park sites. The Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona alone has a maintenance backlog of more than $329 million, the Interior Department says.
The burden comes as more people are coming to the parks. Visitation has grown from 273 million in 2006 to 331 million in 2017. Meanwhile, the number of sites in the park system increased from 390 to 417.
Bipartisan coalitions in both chambers of Congress endorsed the Zinke proposal with matching legislation, but important Democrats like Grijalva opposed it, preventing it from getting a vote.
The new proposal by Bishop and Grijalva would create a similar pot of money, dubbed the National Park Service and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund. But the money would be significantly less, providing $1.3 billion a year for five years, for a total of $6.5 billion, according to details shared with the Washington Examiner by Grijalva’s staff.
To win Grijalva’s approval, the new bill only uses unallocated energy revenue that is already due to the federal government from leasing on public lands.
The Zinke proposal, by contrast, would provide energy funding to the National Park Service for repairs only after the government meets a certain target for energy revenue. And it set the target for energy revenue in fiscal 2018 at $7.8 billion, with the number rising incrementally every year after that. Once that target is reached, the fund would devote 50 percent of the revenue not already allocated to other purposes to the parks.
Critics like Grijalva had said those revenue goals are unrealistic when oil prices are below $80 per barrel and energy companies have reacted skittishly to the Trump administration’s proposal to expand offshore drilling in nearly all federal waters. Grijalva argued the Zinke plan would incentivize additional oil and gas development on federal land, expanding the use of fossil fuels that warm the planet.
“Grijalva raised concerns about that bill’s funding mechanism because it is designed to incentivize energy exploration and justify the administration’s energy dominance agenda,” Adam Sarvana, a Grijalva spokesman, told the Washington Examiner. “The bill being introduced on Wednesday does not incentivize new energy development. It simply spends money from all energy revenue that is due to the Treasury.”
Bishop and Grijalva will introduce their new bill at a press conference Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. ET.
