A bill introduced to Congress on Wednesday could help with the years-long backlog of maintenance projects at National Parks, including projects in Tennessee and Georgia.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and a bipartisan group of senators and representatives introduced the National Park Restoration Act, which would use money from energy leases for onshore and offshore federal land to pay for park maintenance and repairs. The bill would create a restoration fund to provide mandatory funding for high-priority projects at National Parks.
“Addressing the maintenance backlog will help attract even more visitors and create more jobs for Tennesseans,” according to a statement from Alexander. “We must continue to work together to find solutions to the many challenges facing our public lands, and this legislation takes an important step toward doing that.”
The maintenance backlog is nearly four times what the National Park Service receives in annual appropriations, according to a park service overview. A separate park service report shows deferred maintenance increased by $275 million in 2017, reaching $11.6 billion.
Alexander is optimistic that, if approved, the bill could potentially eliminate the backlog of deferred maintenance projects in the next 10 years. Those projects include critical infrastructure and visitor service projects such as restoring and rebuilding roads, buildings, campgrounds, trails and water systems.