Short title

This Act may be cited as the Public Lands Rehabilitation and Job Creation Act.

Congressional findings

The Congress finds the following: (1)The National Park Service’s (NPS) 67,000 park assets include over 17,000 buildings, 4,000 housing units, 1,200 campgrounds, 3,000 water and waste water systems, 5,000 miles of paved roadways, and 18,000 miles of trails; in total, these facilities have a replacement value in excess of $100 billion. (2)The NPS’s maintenance backlog can be traced to two primary causes, the first being that new parks were added to the National Park System with facilities that were frequently in poor condition when transferred, and the second being that inadequate funding and staffing over a number of years caused routine maintenance to slip, slowly but steadily causing minor problems to compound, leading to the need for major repairs and in some cases, new construction. (3)Over one-half of the backlogged infrastructure repair and rehabilitation projects fall under the category of roads and road-related infrastructure. (4)To now reverse the backlog which has grown to nearly $10 billion requires a concerted effort involving necessary repairs and full funding of cyclic and routine maintenance programs so that new problems can be treated at the earliest possible stage. (5)Although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided a much needed infusion of funds to kick-start repairs in a number of parks, the NPS has identified approximately $3.2 billion in highest priority critical system deferred maintenance projects (those projects most important to park operations) remaining. (6)Because the ARRA-funded projects have depleted the number of shovel-ready projects that NPS had ready for construction, the NPS recommends that any funding increase should be phased in over several years in order to allow the NPS to rebuild its staff and support capacity. (7)The NPS identifies preventive maintenance as the key to slowing the growth of the maintenance backlog. (8)The NPS cyclic maintenance program is currently funded at about $100 million a year and is designed to perform preventive maintenance through roof repairs, painting, and road resealing. The NPS maintenance management system indicates a need to increase this fund to $350 million annually, an increase of $250 million from current levels. (9)The NPS warns that any gains made through increased cyclic maintenance efforts will be minimized unless additional park operational maintenance is also increased. (10)At the present time, the NPS has approximately 8,000 permanent and seasonal maintenance employees working within its 391 units. Virtually every park manager asserts that their current staffing level is woefully insufficient to take on identified maintenance needs, and as a result, needed repairs go unaddressed, ultimately adding to an ever growing backlog. (11)Evaluations by outside groups and individuals have routinely identified a 50 to 100 percent maintenance staffing shortfall in the parks they have visited. To increase maintenance staffing by 50 percent would require an additional operational increase of $350 million a year. (12)The NPS estimates that in 4 to 6 months after funding is provided, it can prepare needed plans and complete most of its hiring efforts for additional construction and maintenance work. (13)With respect to National Forests, according to the Wilderness Society, road removal and reclamation, rather than road closings, are the best and most long-term solution to addressing the negative impacts of roads on forest ecosystems. With the proper training, roads and culverts can be reclaimed and slopes recontoured, using the very same excavators, bulldozers, and dump trucks used to build the roads in the first place. (14)For rural communities, road removal and reclamation has the potential to create high-skill, high-wage, locally based jobs, to improve community water supplies, and to enrich fishing and hunting opportunities. Studies in Oregon and northern California have shown that roadwork requiring heavy equipment tends to be more locally based than thinning and planting work, where crews often come from hundreds of miles away. (15)In the long run, the Forest Service estimates that road and culvert reclamation would save taxpayers up to $1,200 per mile in reduced maintenance costs annually. Additionally, each $1 million spent on road decommissioning will support an estimated 11 direct jobs for heavy equipment operators and 3.5 jobs for other forest workers. (16)While shovel-ready projects are good for rural communities, the environment, and ultimately for taxpayers, the reality is that the Forest Service currently has only a limited number of shovel-ready roads-related projects on which to begin work. To successfully allocate funding, the Forest Service needs to identify its minimum road system, design the engineering on projects to remove unneeded roads, and do the project level National Environmental Policy Act analysis before it can break ground. Like shovel-ready projects, this necessary analysis work would also create family-wage, high-skilled, green jobs.

Emergency supplemental appropriations

The following sums are appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to provide emergency supplemental appropriations for fiscal year 2010:

Department of the Interior

National Park Service

Operation of the National Park Service

For an additional amount for Operation of the National Park Service for cyclic and routine maintenance and repair of visitor use, cultural resource, and other park use facilities, $1,250,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2014: Provided, That the amount under this heading is designated as an emergency requirement and necessary to meet emergency needs pursuant to sections 403 and 423(b) of S. Con. Res. 13 (111th Congress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.

Construction

For an additional amount for Construction for major repairs and construction, $2,000,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2014: Provided, That the amount under this heading is designated as an emergency requirement and necessary to meet emergency needs pursuant to sections 403 and 423(b) of S. Con. Res. 13 (111th Congress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.

Department of Agriculture

Forest Service

Capital Improvement and Maintenance

For an additional amount for Capital Improvement and Maintenance for road-related projects, including road decommissioning, $500,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2014: Provided, That at least $100,000,000 of the amount appropriated under this heading shall be for identifying a minimum road system for every national forest and grassland pursuant to section 212.5(b) of title 36, Code of Federal Regulations, as in effect on December 10, 2009: Provided further, That at least $100,000,000 of the amount appropriated under this heading shall be for inventorying, designing, engineering, and executing the work to decommission unauthorized roads: Provided further, The activities conducted under this heading may be carried out through contracting with private entities: Providedfurther, That the amount under this heading is designated as an emergency requirement and necessary to meet emergency needs pursuant to sections 403 and 423(b) of S. Con. Res. 13 (111th Congress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.

Department of Transportation

Federal Highway Administration

Highway Infrastructure Investment

For an additional amount for Highway Infrastructure Investment for the Park Roads and Parkways program for critical park road and transportation-related infrastructure repairs and maintenance under section 204 of title 23, United States Code, $1,000,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2014: Provided, That the amount under this heading is designated as an emergency requirement and necessary to meet emergency needs pursuant to sections 403 and 423(b) of S. Con. Res. 13 (111th Congress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.