The chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that sets the National Park Service budget yesterday said the agency should forego buying new lands until reining in its growing backlog of maintenance projects.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said he found the agency's requested $234 million increase for land acquisitions over 2010 levels a "puzzling" proposal given that the fiscal 2012 budget request also would cut $77 million in construction funding and allow the continued growth of more than $10 billion in deferred maintenance.

Simpson's position -- and the focus of his GOP colleagues in the House on reducing government spending -- could prove problematic for the Park Service's land acquisition plan and threatens to derail a key part of the Obama administration's conservation agenda.

After a hearing of his subcommittee on NPS's budget, Simpson told E&E Daily that he expects lawmakers to shift some of the agency's requested acquisition funding to maintenance needs, depending on how much money the Budget and Appropriations committees make available to his panel.

"We won't know what we'll have to do to match that," Simpson said. "I suspect some of it will come out of the Land and Water Conservation Fund."

NPS Director Jon Jarvis yesterday said the $160 million his agency is requesting for federal land purchases would be focused exclusively on acquiring private lands within park boundaries from willing sellers. The funding would allow the purchase of nearly 100,000 acres of "highest priority" landscapes and would make management of park lands more efficient, he said.

For example, such parcels would include roughly 2 square miles of state lands within Grand Teton National Park that former Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) last year threatened to auction to the highest willing bidder (Greenwire, Dec. 10, 2010).

An additional $200 million would be used to assist states in conserving green spaces, connecting parks and providing access to urban rivers, among other things. The state-level request, a five-fold increase over current funding levels, also would include a new competitive grant program designed to provide recreational opportunities identified in the president's recently released Great Outdoors initiative.

But the agency's overall request of $2.9 billion -- $138 million above 2010 funding levels -- would not stop the growth of a $10.8 billion list of deferred maintenance projects that includes roads, buildings and wastewater treatment facilities, Jarvis said.

"In these tough economic times, of course, it's a trade-off," Jarvis said of the administration's plan to cut construction while increasing conservation spending.

Jarvis said his agency would need $325 million appropriated each year just to keep pace with maintenance needs. More would be needed to reduce the backlog.

He added that the agency was working to identify low-priority buildings it has acquired through past land purchases that it can remove to reduce the backlog. Land purchases, he added, generally do not add to the backlog and make management more efficient because holdings are consolidated.

"LWCF purchases make management more efficient, as the director noted, and enhances public access and recreation and its many economic and public health benefits," said John Garder, budget and appropriations legislative representative for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Such efficiencies can include reduced costs associated with rights of way, fewer user conflicts and law enforcement needs, less boundary surveying, more efficient management of fire and invasive plant threats and improved water quality.

"Incompatible developments like trophy mansions in the middle of Grand Teton or a subdevelopment in the middle of the Mojave don't just threaten our national treasures, public access and the quality of recreation," Garder said. "They create management headaches."

But NPS and other land management agencies' requests for an overall $900 million in LWCF funding -- the maximum authorized amount per year -- is likely to hit additional roadblocks from Republicans in both chambers and will face a bruising battle as Congress tries to pass a 2012 funding bill.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations panel that funds Interior, yesterday also said she could not support the LWCF proposal given a recent Government Accountability Office report that found more than $20 billion in deferred maintenance across Interior agencies.

Other spending items

The Park Service budget request includes a $73 million increase for operations, which Jarvis called the "bread and butter" of the agency's services to its 285 million annual visitors.

Jarvis also defended decisions to eliminate funding for the Save America's Treasures and Preserve America grants and the Park Partnership Projects program, cuts that drew concern from some Democratic members on the panel.

"I was very disappointed in the president's decision to do that," said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who argued that the agency needs to maintain partnerships with small rural areas and urban groups to save historical sites.

The Save America's Treasures program has a "ripple" economic effect by increasing the value of neighborhoods and providing employment opportunities in preservation, McCollum said.

Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.) said a Park Service partnership with New York City and the state had enabled the preservation of a home in the Bronx used by the poet Edgar Allen Poe and had provided educational opportunities to local school kids.

"We will do the best we can to make sure we give you the resources you need so that you can keep these treasures going," Serrano said.

The Park Service budget also would maintain roughly $10 million for Interior's cooperative landscape conservation initiative between federal, state and local agencies to share resource monitoring data for at-risk park areas. The resource management of 150 high-elevation, arid and coastal areas will help monitor threats including melting permafrost and salt marsh salinity and will train more than 500 employees, the agency said.