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Union group partners with Interior to restore national parks, wildlife refuges

lobsterdmb

Just a Lobster Minion
NAXJA Member
PUBLIC LANDS: Union group partners with Interior to restore national parks, wildlife refuges

Scott Streater, E&E reporter
E&E PM: Tuesday, July 29, 2014


The Interior Department announced today that it is partnering with the Union Sportsmen's Alliance on a volunteer effort to conduct restoration and maintenance work at national parks, wildlife refuges and sites maintained by the Bureau of Land Management.

The idea is to get the skilled craftsmen with the Nashville, Tenn.-based alliance to complete already identified restoration and maintenance projects that the National Park Service, BLM, and Fish and Wildlife Service have had trouble securing funding for over the years.

The National Park Service, by itself, has a more than $11 billion backlog of maintenance and restoration projects at the more than 400 sites it manages nationwide. Overall, Interior has estimated it has as large as a $19.7 billion backlog.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that the partnership with the Union Sportsmen's Alliance (USA), which represents affiliates and members of the AFL-CIO, will begin in the coming weeks with 16 "shovel ready" projects identified by Interior that could tap into USA's existing Work Boots on the Ground program that is the union's flagship conservation effort.

"This agreement with the AFL-CIO and the Union Sportsmen's Alliance is really a win-win," Jewell said today in a statement. "I applaud the Union Sportsmen's Alliance for their work to continue to strengthen the nation through volunteer efforts that will make a big difference in conservation projects across the country."

The partnership will be formalized later today in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by Jewell; Fred Myers, USA's executive director; and Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO and chairman of USA's board.

The goal is to get the union's members "to volunteer their time and unique trade skills towards repair and restoration projects in our country's National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and on public lands," according to the MOU.

"America's workers are committed to doing our part to save our nation's parks and restore our public lands," Trumka said in a statement. "The USA was established to unite the union community for conservation under a single banner, to protect our most precious and beautiful lands, waters and wild spaces."

And the union's highly skilled members can make a difference, Myers said.

"When our union members show up with their tool belts on, they have the skills and training to get the job done," he said in a statement. "To every conservation project they take on, they bring an unmatched work-ethic, superior trade skills and a desire to give back to their community."

The partnership with the union comes as the Interior Department's proposed $11.9 billion fiscal 2015 budget request is under intense scrutiny by GOP lawmakers and conservation groups.

Jewell last spring touted a plan in the proposed budget that calls for investing more than $1.2 billion for improving parks and public lands ahead of the National Park Service's centennial in 2016 (E&ENews PM, March 4).

But the House Appropriations Committee earlier this month approved a fiscal 2015 spending plan for Interior and U.S. EPA that includes cuts to programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which Jewell and others have said is a critical tool to help to purchase and preserve sensitive landscapes. Though President Obama requested the full $900 million funding for the LWCF, some GOP lawmakers have resisted, saying the program should not be fully funded when NPS has such a backlog of deferred maintenance projects.

The MOU directs NPS, BLM, and Fish and Wildlife to identify in writing five or more projects, per agency, that a USA work crew could begin work on this year.

"As the bureaus identify additional work projects, they shall prioritize those projects," says the MOU. "Each proposed work project will include a detailed work plan describing the project's scope."

The memorandum also directs the three agencies to perform "all required environmental and cultural resource compliance work prior to permitting the USA work crew to begin work on a project," and to assign "an appropriate bureau employee at each designated project location to monitor the ongoing work, to respond to questions about the nature and goals of the project, and to act as an on-site liaison among the parties."

Of the 16 shovel-ready projects Interior unveiled today, seven are at FWS sites, six at NPS sites and three at sites managed by BLM. The projects identified are at sites as diverse as the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge in Illinois and the Grand Portage National Monument in Minnesota, to the Amistad National Recreation Area in Texas and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio.

The work includes removing extensive overgrown and rusted fencing that is a safety hazard at the Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia; repairing and painting fences at Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Illinois; installing a new boardwalk and a larger deck on Long Meadow Lake at Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge; and replacing old decking, deteriorated structural wood and guardrails on observation decks, boardwalks, trail bridges, overlooks and fishing piers at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

The partnership with USA looks "very, very encouraging," said Joan Anzelmo, a former national monument superintendent and the spokeswoman for the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.

"It's always good when there can be more staff or more people on the ground doing work on parks if there is a plan and projects are already outlined," Anzelmo said.

But she said the coalition wants to see more information about what leeway NPS management will be given to manage the work at individual sites. "You can't just drop people into a park and send them to a work site and think it will get done."

And she added that this creative effort to get important work done on public lands does not let Congress off the hook for years of underfunding.

"I think, again, it's great that the Interior Department is looking for ways to add capacity through this agreement. But budgets have not kept up with managing parks," she said. "Congress needs to recognize the inherent value of the American national parks system and take a look at funding it adequately and stop using it as a political talking point."
 
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