Legislation aimed at permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund will face the U.S. House of Representatives today for a vote. The legislation passed in the Senate with a bi-partisan vote of 73-25, and if it passes the House, President Trump will likely sign it into law.
Known as The Great American Outdoors Act, the legislation aims to combine two previous bills that each have strong bipartisan support. The first would provide full and permanent funding of $900 million each year for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the amount it is authorized to receive from offshore oil and gas revenues – not tax dollars. The second, the Restore Our Parks Act, would invest $1.9 billion annually for the next five years in deferred maintenance for lands managed by the National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Indian Education.
Senator Lisa Murkowski spoke in favor of the legislation, last month, when it was before the Senate: “In Alaska, the Parks service has about $106 million of deferred maintenance. So when you think about the number of acres that we have in federal land, parks, BLM, and refuge – $106 million out of $12 billion doesn’t seem like that much. It’s a lot to us back home. $33 million of that is considered critical. Within Denali National Park, we have a pretty significant visitor center there and the roof and the furnaces in various buildings need to be replaced there. We’ve got a water treatment center in Wrangell that needs to be replaced. I think it’s important for people to realize, because those aren’t things that you’re going to notice. You’re not going to notice that the road is in disrepair or that you don’t have restroom facilities. When you’re going into the park towards the end of this summer, early-September, and there’s no heat in the visitor center, you’re probably going to notice that.”
Representative Don Young has expressed his support for the legislation and will likely vote in favor of it today.