By MATTHEW DALY
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than $55 million in economic stimulus money will be used to fix the National Mall, even though money for the renovations was removed during congressional debate on the stimulus package this winter.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today that $750 million in stimulus money will go to restore and repair national parks nationwide, including about $55.8 million for the National Mall. About $30 million will go to fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, $18 million to repair a Jefferson Memorial sea wall and $7.3 million to restore the District of Columbia War Memorial.
Other projects announced today include $26 million to repair buildings and a seawall at New York’s Ellis Island, where millions of immigrants first entered the country; $5 million to refurbish Philadelphia’s Independence Hall; $13.1 million to demolish and replace condemned portions of the Quarry Visitor Center at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah; and $54.7 million for dam removal and other projects at Olympic National Park in Washington state.
In January, majority Democrats removed $200 million in stimulus funding that had been targeted for the National Mall, after Republicans criticized it as an example of wasteful spending.
Salazar called the money being spent to renovate the Mall a “down payment” on a much larger challenge to fix a national symbol that has fallen into disrepair. The Mall is an open-air national park that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol and includes the Washington Monument and other prominent sites in the nation’s capital.
Salazar said the Mall does not belong to the District of Columbia but to the nation, and called it an important symbol for all Americans.
The projects to renovate the Mall each went though a competitive process and were selected after an extensive review, said Hugh Vickery, a spokesman for the Interior Department. The money for the Mall repairs that was initially rejected had been set aside for a specific park, Vickery said.
The $787 billion stimulus law, signed by President Barack Obama in February, assigned $750 million to the National Park Services for renovations and repairs, but left specifics up to the agency.
“We looked at the whole system and said, what needs to be done now, consistent with the goal of creating jobs now and the importance of the project to the park and relative to the health and safety of the park?” Vickery said. “This was a very competitive process.”
Renovation of the mall “is work that really needs to be done,” Vickery said. “The sea wall (protecting the Jefferson Memorial from the Tidal Basin) is crumbling and the Reflecting Pool is cracking. Anybody who tours the Mall know this work needs to be done.”
Work on the mall is among nearly 800 park projects aimed at stimulating the economy. Projects in nearly all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands will preserve and protect national icons and historic landscapes; improve energy efficiency; clean up abandoned mine lands; and provide $15 million in grants to protect and restore buildings at historically black colleges and universities. Additional funding through the Federal Highway Administration will improve park roads.
Salazar said the announcement, timed with observances of Earth Day, dramatized the Obama administration’s commitment to restore and protect America’s most special places.
The projects are expected to save or create at least 20,000 jobs, he said.
Acting National Park Service Director Dan Wenk said the agency will fix trails and roads, improve visitor centers and complete overdue maintenance on buildings and roads.
“We will be as careful stewards of the American people’s money as we are of their parks,” Wenk said.
