Upgrades to transportation facilities, recreation facilities, and visitor centers are among the projects set to be funded over the next 5 years through a sweeping Department of the Interior initiative.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has announced that the Department is planning to invest some $1.6 billion in deferred maintenance projects on public lands and in Tribal educational facilities between now and 2026.
“We must address the long-delayed maintenance needs of the nation’s aging building and infrastructure,” Haaland said in a statement.
The $1.6 billion, which is authorized through the Great American Outdoor Act, will fund national park infrastructure work, including new roads, trails and bridges, as well as upgrades to dams, and both water and utility infrastructure.
The projects will take place on lands that are a part of the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Education.
The effort is intended to address a growing backlog of deferred maintenance projects in a national park and wildlife refuge system that has seen a 50% increase in visitors since 1980.
More than $2.2 million will go for upgrading facilities at the Partners Point at Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
Just over $2.3 million is targeting infrastructure at recreation sites in Colorado; while $2.6 million will go for an asphalt overlay project on the access road to the Wild Rivers Recreation Area in New Mexico.
Altogether, plans call for the funding of a total of 165 individual projects this year in just over a dozen states.
The Great American Outdoors Project was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress last summer.
By Garry Boulard