WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sleeping Bear, Pictured Rocks, Isle Royale. These are some of Michigan’s most cherished places to visit. They’re loved by locals and many visitors travel from out of town for a chance to experience these unique sites. But a growing list of repairs and upkeep at these sites is causing headaches, especially for taxpayers and local businesses.
“Managing deferred maintenance has been a longstanding challenge for the NPS,” said Mark Greenblatt, Department of the Interior Inspector General.
A few years ago, congress passed a law that would help chip away at the staggering amount of the National Park Service’s backlog requests. The legislation provided about $1.9 billion each year for the next couple of years to address the deferred maintenance backlog. The backlog back then was closer to $14 billion in total but now, it’s closer to $22 billion worth in repairs requests. Out of the $22 billion, Michigan alone has about $160 million in deferred maintenance requests.
The Government Accountability Office said NPS is unable to manage and resolve this backlog because of inaccurate reporting and data collection.
“Incomplete data, inconsistent approaches and the lack of robust quality control resulted in inaccurate reporting and ultimately affected decisions of which deferred maintenance projects to fund,” said Cardell Johnson, Director of Natural Resources and Environment at GAO. “Correcting these practices contributed to the sharp increase in deferred maintenance that we see today.”
“If you have those facilities close or unusable at these national parks, people aren’t gonna come,” said Rep. Jack Bergman (R- MI) during a recent House hearing. Bergman pressed officials on why there’s a holdup on fixing these projects and stressed it hurts local businesses.
“I took it to a very personal level because in our district you have all of these little businesses around there that thrive only if people come to the national parks,” said Bergman. “That’s for the mom and pop economy whether it’s in the U.P. or whether it’s below the bridge, whatever it is. So when I did the math with the backlog just in our areas alone whether it be Sleeping Bear, whether it would be Kenweenaw, Pictured Rocks, is that it’s over a billion dollars of economic revenue to those small mom and pop businesses. In northern Michigan and in the U.P., the strength of our economy whether it be winter or summer, is people visiting the national parks and the national seashores.”
Bergman said he will keep pressing agencies on this issue. He wants more oversight and accountability. Some of those maintenance requests at our parks include repairs to buildings, campgrounds, trails, roads and more.
