
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 7, 1995                   TAG: 9506280044
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LETTING THE PARKS GO TO POT

FOR AMERICA'S national parks, the past few years have been no picnic. Visitorship has risen as inexorably as park budgets have been slashed. Among the results of the money crunch: maintenance deferred, visitor services in decline, preventable deterioration going unprevented, inadequate law-enforcement and rescue services.

So don't bet the campground that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, with his list of 198 National Park Service units that might have to close if the agency's budget is slashed again, is just playing bureaucratic games with congressional Republicans. Indeed, the suggestion to close or sell off marginal parks initially came from Republicans as a way in fiscally austere times to find money for urgent repairs in the major parks, the Yellowstones and the Yosemites.

Among the units on Babbitt's list are seven in Virginia, including the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Franklin County, the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park in far Southwest Virginia and Appomattox Court House National Historical Park east of Lynchburg.

If the most marginal units are defined as those with the smallest budgets, then Babbitt has identified the 198 most marginal in the 368-site system. Closing the 198 would save $108 million per year in operating costs - an amount equal to the 10 percent that congressional budgeteers would pare in 1996 from this year's National Park Service appropriation of $1.08 billion.

Nor do the GOP's budget plans call for any increases in National Park Service beyond 1996 - despite the likelihood of inflation and of continued increases in park visitors. And congressional budget plans provide no money at all for the backlog of $4 billion in repairs and refurbishments that, reported the General Accounting Office in March, the national parks now face as a result of previous budget-cutting.

Not that money alone can solve all the parks' problems. Air pollution and tree disease infect Shenandoah National Park; noise and air pollution are trashing Grand Canyon; development in South Florida is draining the swamps and reducing native animals' habitat in the Everglades. Addressing such issues effectively requires more than restoration of park operating budgets.

Raising entry and other visitor fees at the parks could offset a portion of the funding cuts, enough perhaps to permit removal of some units from Babbitt's hit list. But the level of fees required by themselves to repair and adequately maintain the national parks - for starters, to raise the $4 billion for catch-up work - would put the parks beyond the reach of many if not most American families.

With the federal budget, the questions are not only how much to spend and tax and borrow. The questions also are what to spend on, what to tax or borrow for. Whether by design or default, protecting America's national parklands is not among the current priorities. It should be.

by CNB