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Dear Friends,
I’m very proud to report that the Senate has finally passed the Great American Outdoors Act – a bill I authored that will create as many as 10,340 jobs in Virginia by funding needed repairs and maintenance at National Park sites.
Years of chronic underfunding have forced the Park Service to defer maintenance on countless trails, campgrounds, buildings, and historic structures, as well as thousands of miles of roads and bridges. That’s why, for more than three years, I’ve been fighting to address the backlog of National Park Service (NPS) maintenance needs, which now stands at $12 billion nationwide and $1.1 billion in Virginia alone.
I can’t think of a better time to pass this historic job-creating legislation than right now, as we face soaring unemployment numbers caused by the COVID-19 crisis. The truth is, this legislation is not just the most significant investment in our public lands in a generation – it’s also an investment in our outdoor economy that will support an average of 40,300 direct jobs and 100,100 direct and indirect jobs.
In the Daily News-Record op-ed below, I wrote about my years-long effort to get this done, and about the impact that this bill will have on communities across Virginia and around the country. I hope you’ll take a moment to read the op-ed and share your thoughts using the survey below.
If you want to share your thoughts about an issue that’s important to you, you can send me an email any time using the form on my Senate website. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
The Senate just passed the most significant investment in our public lands in a generation. The Great American Outdoors Act, which I co-authored, is a job-creating investment in our outdoor economy that will rebuild crumbling national parks and other public lands around Virginia and across the country.
The legislation carries on a tradition of responsible conservation that began over 100 years ago, when President Theodore Roosevelt led our country in an important effort to conserve America's vast public lands for future generations. Sometimes called "America's best idea," our National Park System has allowed us to not only preserve these public lands, but to pass them on to future generations better than we found them.
The result has been the preservation of natural treasures like Shenandoah National Park, as well the development of man-made outdoor assets like the Blue Ridge Parkway. Over the years, America developed a vibrant outdoor economy centered around our national parks and public lands. Here in Virginia, our national parks support more than 17,000 jobs, many of them in the Shenandoah Valley.
Unfortunately, years of chronic underfunding has forced the Park Service to defer maintenance on countless trails, buildings, and historic structures — as well as thousands of miles of roads and bridges.
Today, over half of all National Park Service assets are currently in desperate need of repairs, with a price tag of nearly $12 billion. In Virginia alone, the deferred maintenance backlog sits at over $1.1 billion — more than any other state but California and the District of Columbia.
At Shenandoah National Park, that maintenance backlog sits at $90 million. As you head Southwest, the Blue Ridge Parkway has accumulated over $508 million in deferred maintenance needs. That's over $1 million per mile of the Parkway.
Three years ago, I began working with my Republican colleague, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, to do something about this. We wrote a bill called the Restore Our Parks Act to create a dedicated funding source for these overdue repairs. Earlier this year, we combined our legislation with another bipartisan public lands bill, to create the most significant conservation legislation Congress has considered in a generation, the Great American Outdoors Act.
Over the next five years, the Great American Outdoors Act will dedicate enough money to address more than half of the needed repairs to our national parks and completely fund the National Park Service's highest-priority projects. And most importantly, it uses existing revenue generated by our public lands to make these investments, without raising taxes or adding to the deficit.
The Great American Outdoors Act will put people to work on overdue repairs to many of Virginia's most beloved National Park properties, including to Skyline Drive and stretches of the Appalachian Trail, which are at the heart of the Valley's outdoor tourism industry.
In addition to securing up to $9.5 billion to address the maintenance backlog at our public land agencies, the Great American Outdoors Act provides full, mandatory funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This is the most important tool the federal government and states have to conserve natural areas, water resources, and cultural heritage -- and to expand recreation opportunities to all communities.
Over the past four decades, Virginia has received over $368 million in LWCF funding that has been used to protect critical parts of the Valley like the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields and the Appalachian Trail.
In addition to preserving our national treasures for future generations to enjoy, this legislation will also create tens of thousands of jobs across the country and provide a positive economic impact for gateway communities that depend on our national parks.
A recent study by the National Park Service indicates that the Great American Outdoors Act will support over 100,000 jobs and contribute $17.5 billion in total economic output. In Virginia alone, we could create over 10,000 jobs by repairing our national parks.
As our economy struggles with record levels of unemployment, that should be reason enough for the House of Representatives to take up and pass this bipartisan legislation. The president has already promised to sign it into law. We should get the Great American Outdoors Act to his desk, so we can rebuild our national parks, invest in our outdoor economy, and pass America's public lands on to future generations in better shape than we found them.
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Mark Warner, a Democrat and former Virginia governor, represents Virginia in the U.S. Senate.
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