Outdoor Legacy Partnership program awards announced for 2017 !!
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Park Service announced today $13.3 million through the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program to assist 22 cities in 17 states with projects to plan, build, and enhance parks and other outdoor recreation facilities in underserved communities. These public-private partnerships leverage $13.3 million in federal funding with $21.2 million from local governments, private firms, and non-profit organizations to improve accessibility of playgrounds, create canoe and kayak launches and fishing piers, restore vacant industrial land for park uses, and make other important investments in parks across the country.
“Every kid deserves the opportunity to get outside and play. Whether it’s downtown Detroit or rural Wyoming, investing in public lands is an investment in communities. The Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership program is an innovative public-private-partnership which revitalizes communities through improving infrastructure, creating jobs, and enhancing neighborhoods,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. “It connects people to the great outdoors by encouraging and enabling a variety of recreational opportunities in underserved communities.”
The ORLP is funded through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). For more than 50 years, the LWCF has invested revenue from federal offshore oil and gas royalties into more than 40,000 outdoor recreation facilities and conservation projects in every state.
Congress created the ORLP program, in 2014 to complement the agency’s existing LWCF State and Local Assistance Program. The program, administered by the National Park Service, seeks to identify and highlight new ways of providing opportunities for expanding outdoor play in areas with great need, as well as promoting the development of new or enhanced partnerships for outdoor recreation in urban communities across the nation. The grants must be matched at a minimum 1:1 ratio, at least doubling the impact of the federal investment in these communities.
Here is an outline of the ORLP..
Complete listing of projects are here….
