A threat to nation’s parks looming?

A government fund that has helped preserve some of the nation’s most iconic parks — from Gettysburg’s battlefields to the Everglades and the Appalachian Trail — could disappear as early as fall because of a congressional dispute over how the program’s revenues should be spent, U.S. officials warn. The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund has been used for 50 years to acquire land deemed to have special historical or environmental significance. Although the fund is popular with lawmakers from both political parties, legislation needed to keep the program alive appears to have stalled. The law that created the program is set to expire in September, putting at risk a primary source of revenue for the nation’s largest preserves as well as state parks and community playgrounds and ballfields. The money — capped at $900 million annually but substantially smaller in most years — comes not from tax revenue but from royalties paid by oil and gas companies for drilling rights in federal waters offshore. “Absolutely, there’s a risk that this could go away,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in an interview. Jewell said that although the program has traditionally drawn heavy bipartisan support — the law that created the fund in 1964 had only one dissenting vote — a bill that would reauthorize the fund faces significant opposition from lawmakers who either are ideologically opposed to federal land acquisition or have other ideas for using the money. “Anything that looks like a chunk of money that you can use for your other projects, some will want to go for it,” she said. A failure to renew the fund could jeopardize improvement projects at hundreds of sites across the country at a time when many of the nation’s most popular parks face budget shortfalls and deferred maintenance. While Congress has frequently sparred over the fund’s size, the current impasse is regarded as the most serious threat to the program’s survival since its inception during the Johnson administration...more