Interior Secretary Norton defends national parks spending

[Khephra]

Federal workers have undertaken 4,000 new projects to reinvigorate national parks and are fulfilling President Bush's pledge to spruce up America's natural treasures, the country's top public-lands official said yesterday .

Interior Secretary Gale Norton, responding to criticism from watchdog groups, told a national group of conservative state legislators in Seattle that workers are fixing crumbling buildings, removing dangerous non-native plants and repairing trail systems.

"Visitors are seeing improved trails, more accessible campgrounds, rehabilitated visitors centers, better roads, stabilized historical structures and reduced environmental threats as a result of better water and sewer systems," Norton told several hundred from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a free-market group.

Speaking at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, Norton said the administration has pumped "more funding per acre, per employee and per visitor than ever before into the National Park Service."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001992779_parks30m.html

[brook]

1. It now becomes clearer...

why they are tearing apart the beautiful State Park down the street from me and turning what was an old growth raptor and Monarch habitat into a macadam monstrosity. They have used pesticides in our national estuary and destroyed much of the historic stonework that was done in the 30's by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It's just another * travesty.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

2. What is this bitch smoking?