Heidi Alexander: “this morning, I had the privilege of attending the President's signing of the Great American Outdoors Act. Now, this is…”

“this morning, I had the privilege of attending the President's signing of the Great American Outdoors Act. Now, this is a town, Washington, DC, that is accustomed to hyperbole--that is exaggeration--and excessive partisanship. Yet, today, we had neither. As the Secretary of the Interior said, the bill the President signed is, clearly, the most important conservation and outdoor recreation legislation that has passed in this Congress and become law in at least a half century. It may only be exceeded by the actual funding of the National Park System itself as it was gradually created, over time, to become an agency with 419 properties. This legislation does two things. One, it tackles the deferred maintenance backlogs in the Park System. By that I mean, look at our campground in the Great Smokies, which normally has 5,000 families camping there, but it has been closed for a number of years because the sewage system doesn't work. There are examples all across this country, from the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center to the National Mall, of worn-out trails, of roads with holes in them, of roofs that leak, and of sewage systems that don't work. As a result, campgrounds are closed because bathrooms don't operate. All of these are our national parks and our public lands, which is where we want to go and where we especially want to go right now because what all of us want is to get out. We want to get outdoors. We want some fresh, clean air that we can breathe.…”