Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Smokies to feel sequestration's impact, group says

Great Smoky Mountains National Park will close five campgrounds and picnic areas, affecting 54,000 visitors, under the across-the-board federal spending cuts called sequestration, a parks advocacy group says.

That's from the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, which says it acquired National Park Service information. Last month, the retirees' group published an internal memo that directed NPS officials to plan for a 5 percent cut in the current year's budget.

The group says the sequestration "meat-cleaver" will cut parks' workforces, close some areas for extended periods, shut visitor centers and restrict access to backcountry areas.

In the Great Smokies, it says, reduced staff will mean less road maintenance and increased time for emergency responses to accidents, rockslides, downed trees and the like. More than 35,000 vehicles a day use heavily-traveled routes around Cades Cove and between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge in Tennessee and between Gatlinburg and Cherokee.

Park spokeswoman Dana Soehn said those are among the "possible consequences" of sequestration but aren't final. The examples cited were for a planning exercise, she said.

The Great Smokies, the most-visited national park, had 9 million visitors in 2012.

8 comments:

Garth Vader said...

“I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts,” - Barack Obama, November 21, 2011

You would think that as a newsman, Mr. Henderson, you would know what the **** you were talking about.

Anonymous said...

The republican war on America. Isn't this fun.

Europeanexpat said...

Republican? The president came up with this idea. BTW, we spend $40 billion per year in fraudulent Medicare payments

Missouri said...

The President and his chief of staff proposed all this when they blackmailed the Republicans into the fiscal cliff deal. The Republicans are going to let him have his way.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of who came up with the idea, the MATH demands it. Get used to it.

Anonymous said...

If all the things the democrats are saying are actually eliminated then the entire deficit will be gone. The dems fear mongering just doesn't add up.

Anonymous said...

Obama and his dem scum libs are all 100% liars and scared their LOW CLASS lies will be discovered so they use the ole scare tactic BS ...

CUT CUT CUT ...........

Anonymous said...

So if the leader of the country says that an $85B dollar spending cut over 10 years is too much to absorb and will bring impact this country then how the heck will this country be able to deal with any spending cut to reduce the 1.6T of spending each year.........
I bet if the amount was $40B we would be heearing the same rhetoric.