Congressional negotiators for the Republican and Democratic parties reached a deal tonight to avert a federal government shutdown starting at 9 p.m. PDT. That wil keep Olympic National Park, including Hurricane Ridge, open this weekend and other federal services continuing.
EARLIER REPORT:
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — If the federal government shuts down tonight, no visitors will be welcome in the nearly-million acres of wilderness on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Most of the 36 Olympic National Park employees who would work while the rest of the 192 employees are on furlough would be law enforcement rangers who would ask anyone in the park to leave, said Barb Maynes, park spokeswoman.
“Visitors walking in would be asked to leave,” she said. “Recreational access would be closed. The park would be closed.”
If there is no shutdown, it will be business as usual, with park destinations open and visitor centers staffed, she said.
During a conference call this afternoon, officials at national parks across the country prepared for a possible shutdown while congressional negotiators worked to craft a deal by midnight tonight to fund federal operations at least through the next few days.
Park employees who are scheduled to work on Saturday will report to work at their scheduled time. If they are to be furloughed, they will be told then, Maynes said.
If the park closes, all entrances that are not through-roads will be gated, but roads used by the public or private property owners will remain open.
That includes U.S. Highway 101 as it wends around Crescent Lake and Kalaloch, as well as East Beach Road, Camp David Junior Road and North Shore and South Shore Roads.
Day-users found in the park would be asked to leave, while overnight guests in campgrounds or lodges would be given 48 hours to leave, beginning Saturday.
“If the park shuts and it lasts beyond Monday, then everyone would need to leave,” Maynes said.
“If they pass a continuing resolution tonight, then everything is moot, which would be great.”
HERE’S OUR EARLIER story about the possible shutdown:
Olympic National Park will shut down tonight on spring break weekend if congressional negotiators can’t strike a deal to keep federal government running.
The federal government’s spending authority expires today. Congressional negotiators were working to avert a shutdown by setting spending limits through the end of September.
The last such shutdown took place 15 years ago and lasted 21 days.
If no deal is reached, then all national parks — and many other functions of federal government — will close.
That would mean entrances to the North Olympic Peninsula’s No. 1 tourist attraction would be blocked, with gates closed, during the height of spring break.
Gates would be locked across roads to Hurricane Ridge’s popular snow-play area, the Elwha River Valley, the Sol Duc Hot Springs and the Hoh Rain Forest.
That’s not a happy prospect, said Diane Schostak, executive director of the Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau, based in Port Angeles.
“Olympic National Park is the No. 1 reason people come to the Olympic Peninsula,” she said.
“Every day the park is closed, someone goes away disappointed.
“That does not do us well now or when they go back and tell their friends they were disappointed.”
In April 2010, the park noted 160,000 individual visits.
A federal shutdown would close all of the nation’s 394 parks, visited by 800,000 visitors a day in 2010.
And National Park Week is coming up beginning Saturday, April 16.
If there is a shutdown, visitors using overnight campgrounds will be notified and given 48 hours to make alternate arrangements, said a statement from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“Yeah, it’s a big deal,” Schostak said Thursday afternoon while President Barack Obama huddled with congressional leaders 2,800 miles away in a failed bid to reach an agreement.
Obama on Tuesday rejected a GOP bid to keep the government open for one more week at the cost of $12 billion in additional GOP-proposed spending cuts.
If it comes to a shutdown, Schostak will talk with those in the tourism industry to give them “a heads-up on talking points” for potential visitors who call with inquiries about the park, she said.
On Thursday, park spokesman Dave Reynolds briefed Schostak and other members of the tourism industry from Sequim, Port Townsend, Clallam Bay, Hood Canal, Brinnon and Quilcene at a meeting of the Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission.
Reynolds told them a shutdown “looms as a possibility but that everything is up in the air,” Schostak recalled.
“The good thing for us is there are a lot of choices outside the park, so we would hope the community rises to the occasion and points people to state parks and other places of recreational beauty, shorelines and other recreational areas that we have,” Schostak said.
A government shutdown also would hit all national forests, including Olympic National Forest, which is managed by the U.S. Forest Service and includes 367,205 acres in Clallam and Jefferson counties.
A shutdown would affect all national refuges, including the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge between Sequim and Port Angeles.
And Olympic National Park’s 922,000 acres would be idled, though through roads that weave in and out of the park such as U.S. Highway 101 skirting Crescent Lake will remain open, Reynolds said.
The park’s visitor centers also would be closed.
Of the park’s 192 employees, “a small contingent” would stay on as minimum staffing, Reynolds said.
“Ranger presence would remain to provide adequate staffing to protect resources, and maintenance staff [would remain] for through roads,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds said he did not know if park employees on furlough would be paid.
The White House has said it would support reimbursing the pay of employees who are furloughed as a result of a potential government shutdown. It would be up to Congress to decide whether to make a retroactive payment for the some 800,000 federal workers who must take a leave during a shutdown.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
