National Park Service headquarters in Washington shifted nearly 1,500 projects, many already approved, to a new “low priority” list, the Associated Press reported in August. The projects span more than 275 sites and carry a combined cost estimate of more than $400 million.
Park Service employees “were told to not expect anything on the low priority list to be contracted,” one official told the AP, and officials said almost all of the work is expected to go undone. Tar Heel projects at Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Great Smoky Mountains NP were included.
Much of the work on the list is the basic upkeep and maintenance that parks depend on to keep operating, including roof repairs at Golden Gate National Recreation Area, computer upgrades at Katmai National Park, and toilet paper and garbage bags at Yellowstone. Meanwhile, White House priorities, including projects tied to President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 initiative, were given a new, top-priority status. That list included the $16 million botched effort to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue.
“The canceled projects are working on things that are widely popular, across partisan lines. Who doesn’t want safer water and cleaner campgrounds?” a National Park Service ranger told the Center for Western Priorities. “So they’ll cancel projects like these that keep parks safe in order to save a few dollars, but then they turn around and spend millions in D.C. on gold-plated statues. That’s what’s more important to them, which is both appalling and un-American.”
The Park Service’s repair backlog has doubled over the last decade to more than $24 billion, and the agency has lost at least a quarter of its permanent workforce under the current Trump administration. The Interior department told the AP that many entries on the low-priority list were “mis-prioritized and were corrected,” but it declined to say how many or which ones.