IN WHAT HAS become a sad seasonal tradition, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation announced last week that it would be cutting back services at several state parks and ponds. Just in time for summer, the rest rooms, picnic facilities, parking, and swimming beaches will be shuttered at Lake Lorraine State Park in Springfield, Berry Pond in North Andover, and at least five other taxpayer-supported respites from the heat.
They may lack the allure of Nantucket or the Berkshires, but these little green acres aim at a different demographic: families of modest means for whom grilling hot dogs and listening to the cicadas constitute a rare affordable getaway. At each unstaffed facility, DCR promises it will direct visitors to nearby parks “that offer similar recreational opportunities.’’
Before you shrug in resignation over the effects of state budget strictures — what’s closing a few picnic areas when needy people are losing housing or food assistance? — consider that there is some $900 million in a federal account that could be used to preserve and repair just these sorts of recreational properties in the states.
And consider, too, that this account is supported by fees from oil and gas company drilling rights — including in the Gulf of Mexico — under the principle that revenues earned through the depletion of national resources should be reinvested for the public good. What better example of environmental justice at this perilous time of oil exploration than to use a portion of industry profits so all Americans can enjoy the blessings of the natural world?
The account, established with the Wilderness Act in 1964, is called the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Every year a tiny fraction of oil and gas industry profits —$16 billion this year — goes to the federal government in lease payments. And a fraction of that — roughly $900 million a year — is dedicated to the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the purchase and preservation of wildlife and recreation land.
Unfortunately, in 45 years Congress has only once appropriated the full $900 million, preferring to divert large amounts of the money for unrelated purposes. The low point for raids on the fund was in 2008, when just $150 million was authorized. This year Congress appropriated $305 million.
Even diminished, the fund has helped protect large swaths of the national heritage, including the White Mountains, the Everglades, Alaska’s Denali National Park, and the Appalachian Trail. Individual states also get a separate matching fund for local projects, so playgrounds, bike paths, and state parks can share the wealth with more traditional open space.
The “stateside’’ fund this year is $38 million, of which Massachusetts got a mere $841,000. This is an improvement over the Bush administration, which tried in four of its budgets to eliminate the state grants program. But it is still far from adequate to address an estimated $6 million backlog of requests to renovate or preserve Massachusetts park and recreational facilities.
Other states are facing the same difficulties, to the point where the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed all 13 million acres of the country’s state parks on its list of America’s most endangered places.
President Obama has committed to fully funding the conservation program by 2014, and House legislation reauthorizing the fund includes a provision dedicating $450 million a year for the state grants. A coalition of environmental groups and congressmen is pushing to write full funding of the program into law. Such a guarantee is about 45 years overdue.
The great author of the American West, Wallace Stegner, was a prominent advocate of the Wilderness Act. He is said to have written the unusually poetic lines in the legislation, recognizing wilderness “as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.’’
That may sound a bit grand for the Mittineague dog park in West Springfield or the Riverside playground in Haverhill, projects that have applied for grants from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. But nature provides a reprieve from our cares that is just as precious —perhaps more so —when it is close to home.
Reneé Loth’s column appears regularly in the Globe.
