Yellowstone Stinks
shaw, jane s.
PERFECT SPILLS BY JANE S. SHAW J t doesn't get any better than that," says Don Striker, former comptroller of Yellowstone National Park. He's not talking about the majestic Rocky Mountain vistas...
...During the 1990s alone, the Park Service added 3.4 million acres and 25 new units...
...Under a "fee demonstration program," park managers can charge more and keep 80 percent of the revenue, instead of sending it to the U. S. Treasury for Congress to allocate...
...What to do...
...Publicly owned structures have been recognized as poorly maintained since the 1950s, when John K.Gal braith looked at the problem in The Affluent Society (oddly, he recommended more public ownership, not less...
...Some of them would embarrass a Wal-Mart or a Costco," says Richard L. Stroup, an economist who served in the Reagan administration's Interior department...
...Politicians have an incentive to promote programs that look good and keep costs hidden...
...He found that private companies keep their buses longer, maintain them better and re-sell them, on average, at twice the price of the public ones...
...For economists, the Park Service is a powerful illustration of the difference between private and public maintenance...
...Earlier this year, she journeyed to Yellowstone to remind everyone that Bush's 2002 budget includes $439.6 million for Park Service "infrastructure funding...
...Not to mention a whole lot of sewer leaks...
...Jane S. Shaw is a Senior Associate at PERC, a think tank in Bozeman, Montana that applies free-market principles to solving environmental problems...
...The land and facilities under its care are decrepit...
...But the size of the system-and the logic of government ownership-means that each park must fight for funds, putting public relations ahead of basic needs...
...The fees reduce the amount of funds that Congress can allocate...
...Not really...
...Sometimes that means rewarding a friend in Congress, as Glacier National Park in northern Montana was required to do...
...Truth is, the Park Service as a whole has never has been starved for money, just good management...
...Brian Cromwell of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank did, with buses...
...it now has 384 parks, monuments, historic sites and other assorted properties under its questionable care...
...The public wins two ways: taxpayers don't pay for services they don't use, and the parks start treating visitors like genuine customers, which means a lot of that revenue goes toward basic maintenance...
...Addressing the Park Service's estimated $4.9 billion maintenance backlog may help Interior Secretary Gale Norton hold at bay her green critics, who won't forgive her for having worked with former secretary James Watt...
...But taxpayers can't keep track of myriad fiscal details, and can't bail out anyway...
...The first privvy cost $1 million...
...But don't look for the program to grow much anytime soon, warns a staff member of the House Resources Committee...
...But hardly anyone has actually taken the next step and compared private and public maintenance...
...Those spills moved us up three notches in the priority system...
...But the high cost of government neglect is conveniently forgotten when new parks or monuments are proposed-or when organizations like the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land hand over acreage to public agencies.Total federal acreage has grown by 33.6 million acres since 1960, reports resource economist Holly Fretwell...
...It'll take a few years," he says...
...A sewage spill makes the perfect example of deferred maintenance," he says...
...It's what a guy's gotta do to keep up a 2.2-million acre park (about two-thirds the size of Connecticut) on an annual budget of $31.5 million...
...Perverse...
...The park spent $6 million on a system of backcountry chalets that less than 1 percent of park visitors will ever see...
...Study after study shows that politicians prefer ribbon-cutting to real preservation...
...I've seen hub caps swallowed up whole by the potholes...
...We've seen people in tears or enraged because their axle broke on the roads;' says Striker, who now heads Fort Clatsop National Memorial in Oregon...
...He's not talking about the majestic Rocky Mountain vistas or the successful reintroduction of wolves to the park considered the crown jewel of the nation's park system...
...Congress has taken a small step-a new emphasis on collecting fees locally to benefit the local park...
...32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2001...
...Congress has to give up some of its control and let park managers run their own shops...
...In 2002, the Park Service expects to raise $179 million (out of a total budget of $2 billion) from fees...
...Handing the voters a spanking new park looks better on the nightly news than spending money on maintenance that no one ever notices-that is, until it's not done and another sewer overflows...
...Backburnered during the Clinton years in favor of lavish new land acquisitions, maintenance problems are now boiling over system-wide.The National Park Service needs to repair sewer systems, potholes, and aging hotels, replace guard rails, chlorinate water-you name it...
...Nothing gets attention quicker than two, if not three ruptures in the antiquated sewer system...
...By contrast, if a private company takes on expensive future obligations without a plan to cover them, investors can bail.That implicit threat disciplines management...
Vol. 34 • September 2001 • No. 7
