If Congress and the Obama administration fail to avert a budget impasse next week, the National Park Service will move to furlough more than 21,000 employees in a two-day process of closing down the National Park System.
The shutdown, coming as many eastern parks are heading into the traditionally tourist-heavy fall leaf-peeping season, could cost gateway communities upwards of $30 million a day in lost revenues, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Too, the economic impact would be something of a double-whammy for those gateway communities that lost revenues when the budget sequestration imposed early this year led some parks to delay their openings, while others shuttered campgrounds.
Across the 401 units of the park system, closures will be conducted quickly, with "day visitors ... instructed to leave the park immediately" and overnight visitors given two days to leave the parks.
"Wherever possible, park roads will be closed and access will be denied," states the Park Service's contingency plan (attached below) drafted in the event Congress fails to pass a Continuing Budget Resolution to keep the government operating. "National and regional offices and support centers will be closed and secured, except where they are needed to support excepted personnel. These steps will be enacted as quickly as possible while still ensuring visitor and employee safety as well as the integrity of park resources."
According to the plan, posted on the Interior Department's website Friday, each of the Park Service's seven regional offices will be whittled down to about three full-time employees.
At individual parks, "Due to the dramatic differences in operations, size, visitation, location, and infrastructure represented in national park sites, the number of employees required to carry out the essential activities defined above will vary greatly from site to site. As a rule, staffing will be held to the very minimum for the protection of life, property, and public health and safety. Only personnel absolutely required to support these activities will remain on duty. Wildland fire personnel required for active fires or for monitoring areas currently under a fire watch will remain on duty.
"All other personnel, including law enforcement, EMS, and Fire Management not deemed excepted will be furloughed, but will be subject to being called back in the case of an emergency."
Of the agency's 24,645 employees, all but 3,266 will be furloughed if the closure comes about, according to the plan.
At the NPCA, officials decried the possible closure of the park system, saying it could impact as many as 750,000 visitors a day and cost gateway communities as much as $30 million in lost revenues every day the parks are closed.
“A government shutdown would make a bad situation even worse for our national parks,” said Theresa Pierno, the NPCA's acting president. “Families, school groups, and tourists from around the world have made plans expecting our parks to be open. Instead, they face the possibility of disruption and disappointment, while local businesses and park concessioners that serve them face the prospect of lost revenue and further economic hardship.”
While the threat of government shutdown occurred in 2011, the government actually shut down in late 1995 and early 1996 for a total of 27 days. According to NPCA’s 1996 report, this shutdown cost park-dependent communities an estimated $14 million daily.
"Mariposa County, adjacent to Yosemite National Park in California, saw 25 percent of their adult population temporarily out of a job due to the park closure," NPCA said in a release. "The communities around Everglades National Park were hit with an estimated decrease in direct sales of up to $1.4 million. In today’s dollars, a government shutdown next week could be even more devastating to these communities."
“When our national parks closed in 1995-96, I received an outpouring of calls from gateway communities alarmed by the situation,” said Phil Francis, recently retired superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway, typically the most visited National Park Service unit in October, with nearly 60,000 visitors spending $1.4 million each day.
“The potential shutdown adds insult to injury because these communities are already concerned about the recent cutbacks in funding for national parks that have harmed the Park Service’s ability to serve visitors. No one expected these cuts to happen again. Now we’re looking at not only a potential shutdown, but the likelihood of another round of cuts. If that happens, there’s a good chance it’s going to be even harder than last year,” added Mr. Francis.
Chris Fogg, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce in Maine, said the potential shutdown could be devastating to the Bar Harbor community.
“Acadia National Park is an economic driver for our community and we could see a potential loss of $684,000 per day. The beautiful fall foliage in October attracts nearly 10,000 visitors daily and the loss could be shattering to our community," he said in comments distributed by NPCA. "Because of the sequester and the late opening of Acadia’s roads, business was already down about 30 percent in April and May of this year in comparison to the average of the previous five years. We just can’t believe that Congress is letting this happen."
Grand Canyon National Park averages more than 11,000 visitors per day during the month of October. Kevin Striet, business director of Grand Canyon Tour & Travel, is also concerned about a possible shutdown.
“Grand Canyon Tour & Travel operates several buses daily to the South Rim filled with anxious passengers, both domestic and foreign, and some of whom, have planned their whole trip around the chance to visit the Grand Canyon," he said in the NPCA release. "The thought of having to re-direct hundreds of passengers at a moment's notice is not one that we like to think about but as the day comes with no resolution to an approved budget, the actuality of having to re-route passengers to other tours, or to perhaps cancel their excursion altogether, is daunting. We are hoping that at least a temporary budget is approved until a more permanent solution can be found."
Comments
What can you expect from a government spending for years more than it takes in and being guided by selfish politicians with a "what’s in it for me" attitude? At some point the taxpayers have to start paying the price, just sad that the national parks have to take it on the chin as part of the cost.
Since we are talking about budgets, and budget-cuts, I tried to find out about the Parks budget history. You know; so I actually have some inkling of what I'm talking about.
Usually, I'm pretty good at finding answers online, but chasing NPS budget-info has been frustrating. Maybe I'm asking the question wrong....
What I have found, is bits 'n pieces of budget numbers for different times, in different places. I am so far unsuccessful, finding a single source that forthrightly lists the Park numbers in one place.
I've also run into quite a bit of song & dance, and blowing snow, in budget-discussions.
From the bits & pieces though, it doesn't look good. Evidently, the NPS budget has more than tripled, in less than a decade, and has more than doubled, during the current Great Recession.
That's the opposite of what I expected, since I hear so much about NPS "budget cuts".
Does anybody have a good link that shows the Park budgets, plain 'n simple?
Ted-
The NPS 'Green Book' lists "budget justifications" for the past several years, which I assume means requested amounts:
http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/budget.htm
Good luck finding out how much was actually spent, and on what. I'm beginning to doubt NPS management really knows...or even cares!
The NPS is about as transparent as the 80's KGB: http://www.schundler.net/Monocracy.pdf
As I recall, during the last government shutdown, furloughed NPS employees were eventually reimbursed, so for most, it was a paid vacation with a delayed check.
News report: "House Republicans will meet in a rare Saturday session as they plan their next move..."
A Saturday session is rare indeed. So are many weekday sessions as well, so we shouldn't be surprised that our elected representatives have once again failed to meet the deadline for actually figuring out how to keep the government running for another year, as opposed to playing ping pong with bills that both sides admit won't ever make to the White House for signature.
It's hard to get much done when you keep the kind of schedule they do in Washington. According to this news report, "In 2013, the House will be in session for a grand total of 126 days. Congress will spend roughly two-thirds of the year not working. In January, Congress will be in session for eight days—which, compared to August where they will be in session for two days, is considered a 'full month.' June will be Congress’ busiest month with 16 whole days of work."
Now, I realize our elected representatives will tell us they are hard at work on those other days. After all, it's important to travel back to their home districts (at our expense) most weekends to stay in touch with donors for the next election campaign....and then there's always the other trips to earn a hefty honorarium while speaking to sympathetic interest groups, or taxpayer financed junkets to "see first-hand" what's happening overseas.
With full knowledge that two budget showdowns were looming (the FY14 funding bills and the debt ceiling), Congress still took off the usual five weeks in August and early September. But hey, when you work this hard, a long Labor Day weekend is well-deserved.
Too bad these people haven't figured out what "labor" on behalf of all the people they are supposed to represent really means.
Ted, not sure where you're getting your numbers from. According to the NPS "Green Book," its budget book, the FY12 enacted budget was down almost $1 million from FY11 in the area of "discretionary" funding; that is, park operations funding, funding outside of the "mandatory" budget tied to salaries and benefits, utilities, etc.
http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/upload/FY13_NPS_Greenbook.pdf
Page through that document and you'll also see that the FY13 request was down $21.5 million from FY12 for the NPS "operations" budget, the main discretionary fund.
The president's FY14 request was basically the same as the FY09 budget: $2.6 billion vs. $2.52 billion
/2013/04/update-presidents-fy14-budget-proposal-would-get-interior-out-ditch-provide-23-billion-national-park23067
You can find the FY14 request, and past years' budgets going back to FY06, at the following site:
http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/budget.htm
Jim,
The less Congress sat in session, the happier I would be.
Kurt, - While I too question some of Ted's numbers, I think his comments about transparacy are dead on. The best we get is aggregate budgets (not actual spending) for the system as a whole when what we need is unit by unit line item income and expense statements. Its been implied earlier here by NPS insiders that such statements may not even exist. If that is in fact the case it would represent the height of mismanagement. How can the NPS expect the public to give them money when they are totally unaccountable.
Only two words are needed to describe Congress.
Greed
Stupidity