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Report Shows Visiting National Parks Could be Hazardous to Your Health

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Negotiating the Wawona Tunnel in Yosemite National Park could be hazardous to your health, according to the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General. Photo by km6xo via flickr.

Visiting national parks could be hazardous to your health. That's the conclusion that can be drawn from a snapshot of health and safety conditions across the National Park System.

The assessment, made by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General, casts an alarming and greatly disturbing portrait of safety not just throughout the national parks, but across many, if not all, of the agencies that fall under Interior.

Reading the report, which you can find by following the "recently released reports" link at this site, it's almost a wonder that there hasn't been a serious accident somewhere within Interior's empire. Along with the National Park Service, Interior oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Prepared at Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's request, the report singled out the Wawona Tunnel in Yosemite National Park as a serious threat to human safety because the tunnel has gone two decades without serious attention to maintenance and safety.

The National Park Service has allowed crucial maintenance to lapse for years at many of its parks. For at least 20 years, NPS has not performed critical maintenance on its aging Wawona Tunnel located in Yosemite National Park. We concluded that the hazardous conditions in the tunnel endanger lives.

Indeed, one Park Service official told the Inspector General's staff that, "I am alarmed at the potential for a catastrophic event of massive and deadly proportions in the Wawona Tunnel."

While work is under way to correct the tunnel's problems -- repairing exhaust fans so all three can operate properly, addressing the lack of fire escape exits and carbon monoxide sensors, developing an emergency response plan -- the Inspector General's staff visited just 10 of the park system's 391 units, leaving open to question whether other serious health and safety problems are lurking.

Judging from written comments received by the inspection staff, Interior and its agencies have seemed to lack a safety culture.

Some of these comments revealed many health and safety conditions that are serious and have gone uncorrected. Comments also revealed instances in which safety is not a priority and where employees have been retaliated against for reporting health and safety issues.

The Department and its bureaus need to systematically identify and correct health and safety deficiencies by making the protection of employees and the public an integral part of their asset management process. They must take immediate steps to prevent existing hazardous from escalating into deadly ones.

In their sampling of 10 parks, the Inspector General's staff found:

* The headquarters administration office at Grand Teton National Park does not meet earthquake seismic safety codes. Park employees who work in the Moose Maintenance Facility are exposed to poor indoor air quality "caused by vehicle exhaust coming from a garage where snow plows, dump trucks, and ambulances were kept. The facility was also over-crowded."

* At Dinosaur National Monument, deterioration of the Visit Center, which has been closed, continues to "put the irreplaceable fossils at risk. The day-to-day maintenance that is essential to keep the building standing has not been performed. As a result, the fossils were being degraded by exposure to weather and vermin droppings."

* "Providing safe drinking water and properly disposing of wastewater at Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks present a growing risk to the health of employees and the public. Combined, these parks operate 47 drinking water and 42 wastewater systems. An official at Yosemite stated that the park struggles to keep its aging systems running and repairs are usually not made until the facilities break or fail. (my emphasis) In addition, two of Yosemite's water systems did not comply with federal health regulations and many of Yellowstone's systems were in various states of deterioration.

* "NPS pilots at Denali and Lake Clark national parks in Alaska work in conditions that have been reported as unsafe for nearly 10 years by Departmental aviation experts. The airplanes are primarily used for search and rescue, wildlife surveys, scientific research, and law enforcement patrol."

The report, issued late in March, prompted an immediate response from Secretary Kempthorne to address the deficiencies.

"He has made a personal commitment to the employees to improve health and safety agencywide," a spokeswoman for the secretary told the Washington Post. "When this report came out, the secretary deputized a deputy secretary to immediately create a task force to conduct an expedited review of its findings and recommendations."

Many of the problems can be traced to that incredible landscape that Interior oversees, coupled with a lack of resources, both financial and staff. For example, between Fiscal 2000 and Fiscal 2006 the backlog in Interior's maintenance programs ballooned "at least $2 billion," to somewhere between $9.6 billion and $17.3 billion, the report states.

"The Department faces the difficult challenge of maintaining an infrastructure valued at over $65 billion and spread over 500 million acres," the report notes. "The ability to adequately maintain this infrastructure is hampered by limited resources and the aging of the facilities. This infrastructure includes approximately 40,000 buildings; 4,200 bridges and tunnels; 126,000 miles of highways and roads, and; 2,500 dams as well as nearly every type of asset found in a local community."

And yet, Interior has just 175 full-time "safety professionals" to oversee its health and safety program.

Some other highlights of the report:

* The accident rate among Interior employees is one of the highest in the federal government. "During FY2006 4,409 workers' compensation claims were filed, representing a claim rate of 6.27 out of every 100 employees, exceeding the federal average by 41 percent. That year, the Department paid $58 million in claims and lost 15,000 days of employee work, which equates to 58 work years."

* Interior does not have "an organizational structure that facilitates an effective health and safety program."

* Interior does not have "effective coordination between the health and safety and asset management programs."

* Interior does not have "adequate numbers of trained safety staff."

* Interior does not have "an effective facility safety inspection program."

In response to the Inspector General's report, Secretary Kempthorne, among other things, appointed James Cason to oversee safety for Interior; agreed to create a position of Chief of Health and Safety; agreed to develop a department-wide action plan to eliminate significant health-and-safety deficiencies, and; agreed to create a funding strategy to address health and safety issues in a timely manner.

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Comments

This is truly sad. I hope someone is going to come up with a sincere, effective plan to address these issues. I don't think another overpaid bureaucrat is the answer.


I'm going to be spending the next 4 years travelling the US's National Park system as well as several State Parks (not to be named for obvious reasons). We will be documenting ALL issues that we find in ALL parks and will make them publically, and hopefully nationally, known.

Pray for us. Please. I'm not a religious person, but there are a lot of people who would go to great lengths to keep this from happening - especially in the form of a mini series, an investigative documentary, a movie, several books and a lecture tour - to start with.

The Druid


Beamis,

I thought you'd decided not to participate in Traveler any more... it's sad that no matter what the problem in the national parks, you always find a way to blame the "top-heavy" "befuddled" managers of the NPS. I'm not suggesting managers are blameless, but did you note that a significant finding of the report was that:

"The Department faces the difficult challenge of maintaining an infrastructure valued at over $65 billion and spread over 500 million acres. The ability to adequately maintain this infrastructure is hampered by limited resources and the aging of the facilities."

What's your simple answer?

JLongstreet


J Longstreet,

Both Beamis and I were asked to stop posting on the site. For me the asking was a bit stronger; my user account was deleted for me. As I write these words, I have a feeling they may just be deleted, even though there is no profanity or personal attacks contained therein.

I think people have mistaken our disdain for bureaucracy--accompanied by a passion for preserving nature--as personal attack. My vitriol is aimed not at individuals, but at the bureaucratic, self-perpetuating system that threatens the preservation of national parks.

"The Department faces the difficult challenge of maintaining an infrastructure valued at over $65 billion and spread over 500 million acres. The ability to adequately maintain this infrastructure is hampered by limited resources and the aging of the facilities."

What's your simple answer?

My simple answer is that the DOI infrastructure is too large to maintain, and like Rome's empire, our federal empire faces collapse under its own weight. We should be asking ourselves why we've developed nature to the point that it--which should be self-perpetuating--can't do without us. National parks were supposed to be left unimpaired; $65 billion in infrastructure seems a huge, and hugely expensive, impairment. Printing more money to feed the every-hungry bureaucracy seems like an effective quick fix, but it will only harm national parks in the long term.

And long-term sustainability is what we should be thinking about.


Frank and Beamis,

First of all, welcome back.

Now, in light of Frank's contention that the two of you were asked to stop commenting at the Traveler, let me set the record straight by pulling from the email I sent you both last December:

I don't think there's any question that you ... have commented more on the Traveler than anyone else. At times your comments have provided valuable insight into the machinations of the NPS and contributions to the overall dialog. However, there are times when your comments have been overly negative, to the point that not only do they drown out others but, as has been noted twice publicly in the past 24 hours and a number of times privately, have others deciding not to comment, and that's a problem.

In extreme cases, folks simply are not returning to the Traveler.

As you know, one of our goals at the Traveler is to spur discussion and debate of the National Park Service and the national park system with hopes of exploring solutions to ongoing problems as well as spawn more advocates for the system. And, judging from the overall tenor of your comments, you both share this mission in some form.

And that's where an irony strikes. While you want to change the Park Service, your at-times-overly-strident comments are actually muffling debate on the site and, in effect, preventing dialog that just might have some small impact from continuing and evolving. As ardent supporters of the park SYSTEM, I'm sure this is not your intent.

The Traveler's mission is not to tear down the Park Service, and, unfortunately, that's the stance you both seem to have chosen. We do not disagree that work needs to be done within the agency, but we do believe change can come from within. Are we overly optimistic? Perhaps. But if so, then perhaps you're overly pessimistic.

...

If there is to be change from within, the Park Service needs to attract employees and managers who embrace the agency's mission and want to make a change in the culture. Indeed, surveys -- both those from within the NPS and external sources -- indicate that a strong majority (80-85 percent, I believe) of the agency's roughly 20,000 employees already support that mission. But turnover is growing as more and more employees approach retirement. Attracting new employees dedicated to the mission and a healthy culture can be difficult when they constantly read that the Park Service is a dead-end agency.

We don't want you to stop commenting.
(my emphasis) But we think you've more than made your feelings known about what you think of the Park Service and its employees. The Traveler is not the forum for this continued condemnation.

You both have spoken highly of the Traveler in the past and the role it serves, and we certainly appreciate your support. But if we're to have any chance of changing the NPS culture and improving the park system, we need to build the audience and the dialog, not scare it away. Along that line, your input will do little good if the audience does not grow or if folks decide not to comment because they are weary of your criticisms.

That said, yes, Frank, your IP address was banned because you ignored the above-cited email and were trying to make a mockery out of the Traveler. While you certainly have a First Amendment right to vent your spleen, that right does not allow you to post whatever you wish within the cyber walls of the Traveler.

Again, as I noted in December, the Traveler is not the forum for continued condemnation of the National Park Service. If that's your goal, I wish you well in a forum of your own.


I remember times over three decades ago when the fans in the Wawona tunnel would go pffffttt, CO would build up, and the sensors would fail. Maintenance backlogs in the billions Interior wide, and a "Centennial Initiative" to privatize National Parks through "partnerships", to build more stuff we can't get budgets to maintain in the long term, do NOT seem to be lights in the tunnel, Wawona or otherwise.

I watched "safety" programs change in government, and one aspect in Interior is that people work outdoors and where things go bump in the night. The other is that ncreasing REPORTING procedures for ANY incident also accumulate "statistics" to make things appear more dangerous than the real world impacts show with regard to personal injuries.

Yes, there is a HUGE job to be done, no question about it. But to put incompetents in charge of "safety" and gesticulate before the public waving flags and screaming, instead of actually DOING anything constructive, is just one more step on the "path to terror" ANY public relations effort this administration follows.


My personal opinion is to De-Centralize... more would be done and our national treasures would be in better hands. I believe that you are on the right track and hang in there... There is more support than is realized. Thank you for bringing the report to life!


As an Interior employee for some decades (I am not speaking as an official however) I have seen firsthand this issue and the root cause as always is lack of money and direction from administrators, Congress and the White House! It appears politicians love spending money on the new (Steamtown) but fail to maintain the old (Wawona tunnel). No glory in maintenance compared to the nice shiny visitor centers we're building at some parks and refuges. Until America realizes that it takes money to maintain our infrastructure you can expect to see more deterioration and closing of facilities.


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