GAOA Federal Projects released
The outgoing Trump administration is starting to fill in the blanks about how it plans to spend millions of dollars for conserving and refurbishing national parks and public lands.
The Interior Department this afternoon released detailed descriptions of proposed projects to be prioritized for funding in fiscal 2021 through two pots of money made available by the Great American Outdoors Act, which was enacted over the summer.
These descriptions come as Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and the administration have been sharply criticized by lawmakers in both parties for not meeting the original deadline to submit complete project lists to Capitol Hill.
That criticism has only increased in recent weeks. Congressional appropriators have cautioned that the lack of information from the Interior Department could cause delays in negotiations over an omnibus spending bill that must be passed by Dec. 11 to avoid a government shutdown (E&E Daily, Nov. 19).
Appropriators have also warned the agency that a lack of coordination and cooperation could result in the administration getting sidelined entirely from setting the agenda for how Great American Outdoors Act money should be spent (E&E News PM, Nov. 10).
The so-called holy grail of conservation legislation, the Great American Outdoors Act 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.
The legislation also 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.
The 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.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the chairwoman of the Senate Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, quipped this week that a deferred maintenance backlog line item for “Alaska,” with no explanation, was not helpful for anybody.
The two agencies missed the LWCF project list deadline entirely, with no explanation, and waited a week to send it to Capitol Hill. But that list, too, had few specifics, plus it appeared to run afoul of legal requirements for how LWCF dollars are distributed between federal and state grants.
‘Unprecedented opportunity’
The lists today are a step toward satisfying complaints from Murkowski and others. In the deferred maintenance project list, each line item is tagged with the “Station or Unit Name,” “Project,” “Activity Title” and “Short Description.”
In the LWCF project list, each project recommended for prioritization is likewise accompanied by descriptions about what needs are being fulfilled and whether the initiative would include an outdoor recreation improvement component.
“We continue to make progress to deliver on the purpose of this historic conservation legislation,” said Margaret Everson, counselor to the Interior secretary and acting director of the National Park Service who is also the chair of the Great American Outdoors Act Task Force.
“We carefully evaluated each deferred maintenance project and land acquisition to maximize the return on investment for the American people and deliver on the promises of this unprecedented opportunity,” Everson added.
The LWCF list does, however, continue to propose allocations that environmental advocates who were closely involved in drafting the Great American Outdoors Act and its predecessor legislation, the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation Act, say favor state grant programs over federal land acquisitions.
Critics of the administration’s implementation process are likely to continue to demand a reconsideration of the ratios, especially in light of Bernhardt’s secretarial order last week that gave governors veto power over all federal land purchases with LWCF dollars in their respective states (E&E Daily, Nov. 16).
Tom Cors, director of government relations for lands at the Nature Conservancy, also noted that the updated LWCF priority lists should be growing, not shrinking, from the versions the administration submitted to Congress in April prior to enactment of the Great American Outdoors Act.
“These additional, late details unfortunately show that the agency project lists are getting shorter instead of longer,” Cors said today. “Congress fully funded LWCF with the expectation that project lists would grow to match the increased recreation and conservation needs across America.”
