Appropriators: Might be too late for outdoors bill’s details

The Trump administration has submitted more details to Congress about how it would like to spend millions of dollars for the conservation, improvement and acquisition of public lands.

It’s not clear, however, whether Congress will incorporate the information into its fiscal 2021 government spending bill.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the chairwoman of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, told E&E News last week she was waiting for the Interior and Agriculture departments to provide her panel with more details about how the agencies propose spending new funds freed up by the Great American Outdoors Act.

The so-called holy grail of conservation legislation fully and permanently reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund — which pays for federal land acquisitions and increased access to outdoor recreation — at $900 million annually, plus created a five-year trust fund to drive down some of a $20 billion backlog of deferred maintenance projects at national parks and on public lands.

While Murkowski’s office was not able to provide immediate comment on whether the new information submitted Friday satisfied outstanding concerns, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a member of the subcommittee, suggested today through a spokeswoman that appropriators would likely move ahead on their own.

“We are pleased that the department is finally providing more detailed, project-specific information, although at this point the appropriations process is likely to move forward with alternate LWCF funding allocations, as authorized by the Great American Outdoors Act,” said Sam Runyon, Manchin’s spokeswoman, referring to the provision of the law that allows Congress to make its own determinations.

Annie Orloff, spokeswoman for Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Tom Udall (D-N.M.), also signaled this was too little too late as far as the New Mexico Democrat was concerned.

“Despite last-gasp attempts by the outgoing Trump administration to undermine LWCF, Sen. Udall will be working on a bipartisan basis to ensure that the Interior appropriations bill implements the landmark Great American Outdoors Act as Congress intended to expand conservation efforts and outdoor recreation access for all Americans,” Orloff said.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee member, agreed: “These details are coming very late in the game,” said his spokesman, Roy Loewenstein.

On the other side of the Capitol, Amanda Yanchury, a spokeswoman for House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), noted that appropriators were not even informed prior to the administration posting the new details.

The Trump administration had until Nov. 2 to submit two lists to Congress of priority projects to fund in fiscal 2021: one with money from the LWCF and one with dollars from the deferred maintenance account.

The Interior and Agriculture departments submitted the backlogged project lists on time, with critics complaining the line items lacked the details and specificity needed to ensure federal accountability.

The two agencies did not submit the LWCF project list by the deadline, saying it was the responsibility of the Office of Management and Budget. When Interior and USDA did send over the information, it also had few specifics, with critics also saying it ran afoul of legal requirements for how LWCF dollars are distributed between federal and state programs.

The projects included in the new LWCF list also differ considerably from those in the list submitted to Congress back in April in compliance with the Great American Outdoors Act’s predecessor legislation, the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Recreation and Management Act.

The April list included federal acquisitions to be facilitated through the Bureau of Land Management that would increase access to outdoor recreation, which the outdoor recreation industry is relying upon heavily as it struggles to survive in an economic downturn, even as more people are spending time outside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, BLM projects were scrapped from the lists the administration turned over to Capitol Hill earlier this month. Jessica Turner, the president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, recalled that Interior officials explained the exclusion by saying that increasing the bureau’s footprint wasn’t a priority given it is already the largest overseer of federal lands.

Critics of the government’s implementation of the Great American Outdoors Act see this exclusion as a hostile gesture by an administration that has sent mixed signals about its commitment to protecting public lands — from the appointment of William Perry Pendley to oversee BLM to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s recent secretarial order giving governors veto power over federal land acquisitions using LWCF dollars.

Details, details

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), one of the champions of the Great American Outdoors Act that freed up this new funding, welcomed new descriptions of line items for priority projects to take place in fiscal 2021.

“I commend Secretary Bernhardt for providing additional details,” Portman, who has been lobbying the administration to speed up its implementation process, said in a statement today. “As we continue to respond to the unprecedented health care and economic crisis caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, I am pleased that these shovel-ready projects will not only improve our parks and public lands but will also create jobs.”

Marcia Argust, the director of the Restore America’s Parks project at Pew Charitable Trusts, has been largely critical of the administration’s implementation of the Great American Outdoors Act so far.

But she, too, said this morning that based on her preliminary analysis of the newly released LWCF project descriptions, it appeared Interior and USDA were moving in the right direction.

“We’re still looking at it, but I think overall this list is accomplishing what the park service has been saying that they want to do,” Argust said.

“They want to focus on visitation experience and tackling major infrastructure needs like roads and water systems, at least in the first year, and then also the durability of investment — what they’re choosing to spend the money on, will it have a fix that’s lasting or is it a fix that will prevent additional investments later on. Will it actually be cost-saving like projects where they are fixing roofs and structures that will prevent additional issues from happening, like leaking.”

Priority federal land acquisitions with LWCF funds include the purchase of 236 acres known as the “Doc’s Way property,” which would allow the government to improve hiker safety along the Appalachian National Scenic Trail in Virginia.

Funds in the LWCF account in fiscal 2021 would also go toward acquiring four to seven tracts at the Forks of the Road slave market site at Natchez National Historic Park in Mississippi, “which faces multiple threats of urban intrusion,” plus the 213-acre Brandywine Golf Course property located within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio — a priority of the National Park Service since the late 2000s in order to preserve recreation opportunities and protect related natural resources.

The administration also filled in more details about how it wants to spend deferred maintenance project funding. While Interior had originally said it wanted to fund improvements on the National Mall, the agency has now clarified that money would be spent on restoring the aging exterior of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

It will also address the infrastructure of the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York, repair sea walls surrounding the Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey, and several long-standing maintenance needs at Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks in Wyoming and California, respectively.