[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 29 (Thursday, February 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1373-S1374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   National Resources Management Act

  Earlier this week, as I was saying earlier, the Senate passed other 
legislation called the lands bill, but it is really about land 
conservation. It is about ensuring that we have the ability to protect 
treasures around our great country.
  There were two provisions that were in this land bill that were very 
important for Ohio. One had to do with something called the Ohio & Erie 
Canalway National Heritage Area. You have probably heard of the Erie 
Canal. It ran through Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and other States. 
The national heritage area is a 110-mile route on that canal from 
Cleveland to New Philadelphia, OH. It follows the route of the canals 
that went along the Cuyahoga River. It is a beautiful, beautiful area. 
It is the 87-mile trail, which is now enjoyed by 2.5 million visitors a 
year, that we wanted to be sure to protect in this legislation.
  I have been there, and my family has been there. It is a great place 
to hike and great place to bicycle. It is a great place to go bird 
watching. It is a great place just to enjoy time with your family.
  It is our history that we are preserving. The canalway was 
established as a national heritage area by Congress in 1996, and 
although Congress has authorized funding for the Ohio & Erie Canalway 
National Heritage Area through fiscal year 2021, we had reached a 
funding cap this year, which meant we were at risk of losing about 
100,000 bucks. That may not sound like much in the context of the 
Federal budget, but $100,000 is a big deal to the canalway. Why? 
Because we use the Federal money to leverage private money and State 
and local money, and it is a critical part of making sure that we 
continue to have this beautiful treasure in our State that brings 2.5 
million visitors a year. It adds a lot of economic benefits to our 
area. So Senator Brown from Ohio and I have promoted this. We know that 
this limited Federal funding is going to be critical to leveraging 
those public-private partnerships, helping to create 4,200 jobs in the 
region and generating $408 million in economic benefits.
  It is important to have that kind of stable funding in our heritage 
areas so they can continue to do what they do--to tell our Nation's 
rich history and to provide the recreational opportunities to the 
people I represent. So I am glad that was included in the land package.
  There was also another piece of legislation that was passed. It was a 
bill that Senator Cardin from Maryland and I had been promoting called 
the Migratory Birds of the Americas Act, and it reauthorizes the Fish 
and Wildlife's program that promotes long-term conservation, research, 
and habitat protection for more than 380 different species of migratory 
birds.
  This is a big deal to our State of Ohio. We are a big bird-watching 
State. We have a lot of migratory species, including our State bird, 
the cardinal.
  George Voinovich, whose seat I hold, was a big champion for this 
program in his time in the Senate, and he used to talk about the 
importance of this from an economic point of view. It is true that bird 
watching brings more than 75,000 visitors a year to just one single 
birding event in Ohio. For the birders who are listening, you probably 
know it. It is in northwest Ohio at the Maumee Bay State Park. It is 
called the ``Biggest Week in American Birding,'' and polls have ranked 
it as the top birding event in the country. We like to think it is.
  There is a study out of Bowling Green that indicates that bird 
watching around Lake Erie has contributed more than $26 million 
annually to our local economy--$26 million a year--and it has created 
almost 300 jobs.
  So passage of this legislation is great news for us. It is about 
protecting that habitat in Ohio but also the habitat where these birds 
go in the wintertime. They are snow birds. They go south. We ensure 
they are going to come back and ensure we can continue to have that 
economic benefit and enjoy that natural beauty.
  So I commend Senators Murkowski, Cantwell, and Manchin for working to 
get this legislation through the Senate. I look forward to the House's 
taking it up. It also has a good provision in there for helping our 
sportsmen and ensuring that we have public access to public lands. So 
my hope is that can move forward and we can ensure that we begin to 
deal with the issues that were addressed in that lands package.
  One thing that was not addressed in the lands package that I want to 
be sure we don't lose sight of is the condition of our national parks.
  Now, again, if you are going to talk about the treasures of our 
country, you have to put the national parks right at the top. We have 
this amazing park system that is the envy of some of the other 
countries around the world and the reason so many foreign visitors come 
to our country. The national parks now attract 330 million visitors 
annually. By the way, that is more visitors in the last few years than 
in the previous few years. So it is actually going up some.
  These 330 million visitors come to see 84 million acres of parks and 
historical sites. Again, it is a huge economic boon to our country 
because a lot of people are coming from outside the country but also 
from the local areas, where people travel to get a beautiful vacation 
with their family, one they can afford. So we need to do everything we 
can do to hold our parks up.
  Here is the problem. We have, over time, funded the parks' day-to-day 
operations but not funded their longer term maintenance problems. So 
think of a building that has a roof that is leaking. Now we are funding 
the program within that building and the naturalists, but what we are 
not funding is the actual reconstruction of that building. It is called 
a maintenance backlog. That backlog has grown and grown and grown over 
the years to the point that we now have a $12 billion maintenance 
backlog in our parks, and the park funding that we provide every year 
can't come close to providing that funding. So what some of us have 
done over the years is tried to bring attention to this and to figure 
out a way to get funding that was specifically focused on how to ensure 
that our national parks don't continue to deteriorate.
  Again, they are such a beautiful part of our country, our history, 
and our culture. We have to preserve that legacy.
  In Ohio, we have eight national parks, including Cuyahoga Valley 
National Park. Cuyahoga Valley National Park is one of the top 14 
visited parks in the country. We are very proud of that. Whether it is 
biking, hiking, fishing, or kayaking, 2.7 million visitors a year go to 
Cuyahoga Valley. I am one of them. I like to do all of that there.
  So these parks need to be sure that they can continue to be this 
treasure for the future. The infrastructure--the water infrastructure, 
the roads, the buildings, the bridges--is all deteriorating to the 
point where actually some of it can't be used.
  If you go to a national park today, you may see that there is a trail 
closed or there is a visitors center that can't be visited. You may see 
that some of the campgrounds are closed or some of the bathrooms are 
closed because those facilities have not been able to keep up with 
their deferred maintenance.
  So I think we should be putting more money into deferred maintenance 
and bringing our parks up to speed and addressing this $12 billion 
backlog than the idea of expanding parks. We ought to be focused more 
on the stewardship of the parks we have, and that $12 billion is 
impossible to find within the parks' budget that we have.
  Think about your own house. If you allow deferred maintenance to 
build up and you don't take care of the roof, as an example, what 
happens? Well, you get a leak in the roof and then pretty soon your 
drywall is ruined, and I am pretty sure you would find out that your 
floor is ruined, and the costs mount up. That is what is happening in 
our parks. So we are not fixing the deferred maintenance, and we are 
creating other costs and other problems, and I have seen it. I have 
gone to four of our larger parks in Ohio to see, specifically, what 
their priorities are in terms of deferred maintenance.
  One is a leaky roof. Another is a bridge. Another is part of a 
railroad track that runs through it, a tourism railroad track. Another 
is a seawall on Lake Erie. If that is not fixed, it then causes other 
damage.
  My hope is that we can, on a bipartisan basis, deal with this because 
these problems compound. They get worse and worse if you don't deal 
with

[[Page S1374]]

them. We can't wait any longer to address these maintenance needs.
  Even though we don't have Yellowstone Grand Teton, or Yosemite in 
Ohio--we don't have huge parks like those--we have a $100 million 
backlog in deferred maintenance in our smaller parks in Ohio--$100 
million.
  I toured Cuyahoga Valley National Park with Superintendent Craig 
Kenkel and Deb Yandala, who is CEO of the Conservancy for Cuyahoga 
Valley National Park. Deb is also president of the national association 
of friends groups for our parks. These friends groups are fantastic. 
They provide a lot of funding for the parks, private sector funding. I 
think that is an incredibly important part of our overall park funding, 
but they can't afford these maintenance projects either.
  Today, there is more than $45 million at Cuyahoga Valley alone in 
unmet maintenance needs--$875,000 for badly needed renovations for 
their welcome center. I have been there. I have seen it. They need it. 
More than $3 million is needed to renovate parking lots that are 
crumbling, and more than $2 million is needed for trail repair for the 
extensive trail system throughout the park.
  I have also been to other parks in Ohio and have seen what some of 
the deferred maintenance is. At the Perry's Victory & International 
Peace Memorial up on Lake Erie, $47.7 million is needed in long-delayed 
maintenance, which includes millions to repair the cracks in the 
seawall there to enable the rest of the monument to continue to exist, 
and the visitor's center has to be made ADA compatible and needs 
repairs.
  Everything we talk about here in terms of the parks is normally very 
positive. Democrats and Republicans alike love the parks. People in 
America love our parks. But I think they are surprised to learn that 
just underneath the surface, our parks are crumbling. We have to do 
more to ensure they are going to be enjoyed for generations to come.
  From 2006 until 2017, annual visitation increased by 58 million 
people. As these needs are growing, more people are coming, putting 
more and more pressure on the parks. Keeping up with this aging 
infrastructure and increased visitation has really stretched the Park 
Service and required them to focus on just the very immediate 
maintenance needs and postpone or delay these other projects. We can't 
continue to use these bandaids. We have to address the underlying 
issue.
  I feel this is a debt unpaid. This is deferred maintenance that has 
built up over the last couple of decades that we should have addressed 
and we didn't, and now we need to go back and do it to ensure that it 
doesn't cause additional costs. So this week, I have reintroduced 
legislation I have worked on in the last three Congresses. I have 
reintroduced it with three of my colleagues--Senator Mark Warner from 
Virginia, Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee, and Senator Angus 
King from Maine. Two Republicans, one Democrat, and one Independent--
that makes it tri-partisan. It is called the Restore Our Parks Act--a 
commonsense solution to deal with this $12 billion backlog of long-
overdue maintenance projects.
  I thank my colleagues for stepping up and working on this together, 
and we have. We have had different proposals out there. Senator Warner 
came up with the idea of using offshore and onshore revenue from oil 
and gas drilling. We combined with the bill that Senator Alexander and 
Senator King had put forward. There are others who have great ideas. 
Senator Steve Daines from Montana is one of our strong supporters. He 
is chair of the National Parks Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee. As he said, he grew up in the shadow of 
Yellowstone Park. We have lots of colleagues on both sides of the aisle 
who care about this and are involved, and I thank them for their hard 
work.
  Senator Alexander told me that in the 100-year history of our 
national parks, there has never been a single bill more important than 
this one. That is saying a lot. Since Teddy Roosevelt decided to 
acquire this land for our national parks, there have been lots of ways 
we have tried to help the parks, including, recently, legislation that 
I drafted on the centennial of the parks that helps us get more public 
and private money into the parks. That is good, but it is not enough to 
handle these incredible--$12 billion--deferred maintenance costs we 
have now.
  The legislation creates what is called a legacy restoration fund, 
which will get half of all the annual energy revenues over the next 5 
years that are not otherwise allocated, and it will be used for 
priority deferred maintenance projects. These are royalties from 
onshore and offshore energy development. The Trump administration is 
doing more of that development, so there is more revenue coming in. The 
bill caps the deposits into the fund at $1.3 billion annually, so no 
matter what, even if there is a lot more money coming in, we will have 
a cap of $1.23 billion annually, which will provide a total of $6.5 
billion for deferred maintenance projects over the next 5 years.
  I said $12 billion earlier, and that is the amount, but for the 
urgent priorities, it is about $6.5 billion. That is how we came up 
with that number. So what we are trying to do is--at least let's 
address the urgent priorities in the next 5 years using the revenues 
coming into our government from these offshore and onshore energy 
projects, oil and gas projects. Again, if it is allocated for something 
else, like the Land and Water Conservation Fund, we don't touch it. It 
is just funding that is not already allocated somewhere else.
  Last year, we had 37 cosponsors here in the Senate for this 
legislation, Republicans and Democrats alike--more than one-third of 
this Chamber.
  A similar House bill, our House companion bill, had 234 Members 
cosponsoring it--more than the 218 needed, more than the majority.
  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee reported this bill 
out on a bipartisan basis last fall. I was on the committee. We had a 
good debate on it. We reported it out with a 19-to-4 vote. There is not 
a lot we do around here that is that bipartisan.
  We received overwhelming support from conservation and outdoor 
recreation groups. This includes the National Parks Conservation 
Association, the Outdoor Industry Alliance, the Trust for Public Land, 
the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others. At our hearing we had on the 
legislation last year, the director of the Pew Charitable Trusts said 
it well: ``Supporting this bipartisan bill is a wise investment for our 
National Parks System and has overwhelming support from the American 
public, generates hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars 
for the economy each year and provides access to world class recreation 
opportunities and helps preserve our nation's history.''
  Yes, the parks do all of that. That is why it is so important that we 
preserve them and ensure that this long-term problem gets addressed 
now.
  I am proud to introduce legislation in the Senate this week, and I am 
proud that the House companion bill is being introduced today by 
Representatives Bishop and Kilmer. I look forward to working with my 
colleagues to get this bill across the finish line. I thank the 
Senators who have already signed up as cosponsors. I hope we can 
continue to build support for this and get this commonsense bill done 
to help preserve our national treasures.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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