then I want to know how this budget was put together other than what I think was done. CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK Mr. YATES. I seem to remember, if my memory serves me right, when Mr. James Watt was the Secretary of the Interior, we came up with the same kind of sewage breakdown problems that had raw sewage being allowed to go into streams that were used for treatment. Mr. HODEL. In the 1980 report- Mr. YATES. Right. Mr. HODEL. GÃO identified that there had been mixing of sewage and drinking water in Crater Lake National Park. I remember it because I had no expectations of being with the Department of Interior at that time, but I read about it being an Oregonian and a visitor to Crater Lake National Park. I thought to be sure you should take bottle of water. That was part of the kind of thing that was supposedly-according to the Park Service's representations to the Department— taken care of in the $1 billion that we expended. We put into place this maintenance management system for the purpose of identifying in advance, rather than after the event, problems such as sewage mixing with drinking water. I don't think that anybody could suggest that this is a tolerable situation. Now, we've spent nearly $2 billion-or $1 billion in addition to that $1 billion we've talked about-in maintenance activities under this Administration. Probably $1.5 billion on maintenance. Almost $2 billion-it's $1.985 billion through Fiscal Year 1988. If-in spending that money-what the Park Service is going to come and testify to is that in spite of Mr. Mott's clear concern-and I believe the concern of the Regional Directors-they have not bothered to identify or raise to a sufficient priority that out of that $2 billion we can somehow take care of $1 million worth of sewage lines here, then the problem isn't money. The problem is management. We need to do something about people who haven't got a better sense of priorities. I would be shocked to find out that at Golden Gate National Recreational Area-or Gateway National Recreation Area, is a very large area-I'd be shocked to find out that the superintendent there knew of this situation and permitted hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to be spent on maintenance elsewhere in that park and not help with the sewage situation. Mr. YATES. Well, take a look at what's going on according to this draft report. Look what's going on in Yosemite with the public restrooms there. They're in terrible condition according to this report. If they're in that condition, they've been in that condition for a period of time. Anyway, somewhere in the report-I'll be asking the chief about that- IMMINENT MAINTENANCE PROBLEMS Mr. DICKS. I'm still confused, Mr. Chairman, by one thing. Mr. Dicks. I heard this question that we have to budget for. That doesn't seem right to me. In other words, if you've got a problem and it's imminent, and it reaches the Secretary's desk as being threatening or whatever, it doesn't seem that you should have to wait and budget for it to get it fixed up. I mean, there's got to be some way to deal with those kinds of things without having to put it in the budget. I'd better not have to go through an 18 month process of getting it in the budget; I'd rather fix it. Mr. HODEL. Let me remind you what the Director said. He said they identified this problem and they solved it. He meant in a temporary way-they solved it with portable toilet facilities. So that's a fix, and we Mr. DICKS. That's a legitimate fix, okay. Mr. HODEL. But it's not a long-term fix, and I don't think anybody's suggesting that. The Director has said he believes it's of sufficient priority that, with the money for construction in this budget, we ought to contract with the community to get it fixed permanently. Mr. DICKS. And get it fixed permanently. Mr. HODEL. Now that's I think a reasonable way to proceed. Now let's assume that it would have cost more money than that. And it's at the beginning of a fiscal year following the appropriations process. With a $246 million maintenance account plus a $15 million construction account, I know that a bureau head can come to this Committee and point out the severity of the situation, and if it's the kind of thing we're talking about, you would agree to the reprogramming request. That would force some other item on the list off the list, and that would force the following year's appropriations to pick that up. But we do have that kind of flexibility with the support of the Committee. I for one would urge that we not create undue flexibility because there's nothing that gets us into trouble with the Committee or the world faster than having too much flexibility over our funding. It is not inappropriate to come to this Committee with a reprogramming request and say, "We have identified a serious problem that was not known, and we need permission to spend the money differently than we'd originally asked for." But I think one of the things that we will be most interested in when Mr. Mott does his review of the GAO report is whether we've got some longstanding problems of the type you've read about, Mr. Chairman, that have not, for one reason or another, been identified to us as a priority. I would like to know by what reasoning process we reached that kind of conclusion. Mr. YATES. It doesn't sound rational. We are talking about the National Parks. We still have to find out whether these conditions are also on the wildlife refuges which people visit and also on the public land. As it happens, this inquiry is sparked by the GAO report. There is no GAO report on the refuges nor on the public lands. We'll ask about those, too. Mr. HODEL. Mr. Chairman, one of the other things that I think we have to look at is the methodology. If we concur with the GAO report, and are able to provide some priorities as to what we think are the kinds of things that require immediate treatment, and how that fits within our budget, fine. But we have problems with it. I think we need to look at the methodology because I am suspicious that we're dealing with open-ended questions. If you'd asked me when I was the Administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration if I had all the money that I could use effectively in any budget that I ever submitted, the answer was, well, no. We're always operating with less. It's like asking any good attorney if he has enough time to do all the projects that are on his desk. My observation has been that if he does, he's spending too much time. NPS LAND ACQUISITION Mr. YATES. Let's turn to another aspect of the parks, and that is land acquisition. Last year-in the current budget-we made available $60 million, of which $20 million was State grants. You come to us in this budget with a request for $15,779,000 to pick up land, to pick up inholdings in the parks, or for buying lands that aren't inholdings but which are necessary for the parks. We read the report of the National Parks Conservation Association, Volume 7, in the chapter on land acquisition, and it says this: "Few people realize there are more than 2 million acres of private land estimated to be worth more than $2 billion inside the boundaries of the National Park System." $2 billion. We couple that with the report on maintenance in assuming that the GAO may have exaggerated its report on the amount of maintenance that is in arrears in the National Parks to the tune of almost $2 billion. So that's $4 billion immediately for the parks. This is in addition to what you may need for other purposes in the parks. It provokes the question to me, Mr. Mott, Mr. Secretary: is the Park Service too big? Should there be a separation within the Park Service of say, the old classic parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite and Glacier, and separation away from the national parks of your buildings, your houses, perhaps your recreation areas, which are recreation areas as such. Have you ever considered that, Mr. Mott? Are you too big? Mr. MOTT. No, we're not too big. I don't think so. Mr. YATES. All right, should there be additions to the National Park Service in your opinion that ought to be made? Mr. MOTT. Additional lands? Mr. YATES. Yes. Mr. MOTT. There should be. Absolutely. Mr. YATES. Can you tell us what they are? Mr. MOTT. Well, at the present time, I've asked our Regional Directors to recommend to me those areas in their regions that they think are of national significance, and we will be making a report on that. But there are areas, such as the Tall Grass Prairie, which we don't have an example of in the National Park Service, that is going through the approval process now. That's an important area. There are other similar areas around the United States with natural and cultural areas that are of national significance that ought to be in the National Parks eventually. The river- Mr. YATES. Wild and scenic river? Mr. MOTT. Right. And the setting aside of a complete river system so that people in the future will be able to see what a wild natural river looks like. Mr. YATES. With fish for Mr. Conte? Mr. MOTT. And ducks. Mr. HODEL. But remember, Mr. Chairman, he might not like it because we do not permit shooting. Mr. YATES. How about fishing? Mr. HODEL. Well, we do permit fishing, but we don't restock. If we have too many fishermen, then there are no fish left. Mr. YATES. Mr. Conte takes care of the restocking of all the rivers in the country. Mr. HODEL. And you know in some cases we do not permit fishing in the National Parks. NPS STAFFING LEVELS Mr. Dicks. Mr. Chairman, just one more thing. In this draft report, one of the things it talks about, Mr. Mott, is the lack of adequate staffing. In other words, the survey that was done by the GAO came back and one of the problems was—one of the reasons you've got this maintenance problem was that they were given a lot of additional responsibilities for hazardous materials, things of that nature. There have been additions to the parks, and we don't have the maintenance personnel to do all the tasks that we're asked to do. I know we've had cutbacks in overall funding of individuals to the Federal Government-I assume that's true in the Park Service and the Department of the Interior. Is that the root cause of this? Is it not just money but also a lack of staff? Mr. MOTT. We are evaluating our entire maintenance program, and it's all being put on computer so that we will know exactly what the maintenance problems are, when the maintenance should come up for what kind of work, and so forth and so on. We've spent a great deal of money and energy in putting this program into effect, and we will have some very accurate information along those lines. There are situations where we have the money but we don't have the FTE's. We have two ceilings we have to work against all the time: one is the amount of money available to us and the other is the number of FTE's available. There are areas where we have the money, but we don't have the personnel. And there are areas where we need additional personnel. Mr. Dicks. Well, that's a very good candid answer. In the military, in some of our industrial facilities, we've found that having those two things were not compatible. You had to give the manager of a shipyard or an air rework facility the money, and then you said you go out and get the job done. And we took off manpower ceilings because we found that it was counterproductive. Now, it sounds to me like we may have the same situation here, where you want to give the manager the flexibility-give him the money-let him manage that money and if he needs some extra people he can go and get them. Mr. HODEL. Let me interject- Mr. DICKS. Is that not going to work in the Department of the Interior? Mr. HODEL. Before we get into advocating those kinds of changes in policy, I think there's a major discussion that has to take place, both inhouse and internally in the Administration. There's no question about it. If we had either unlimited funds or unlimited funds and unlimited people, we'd do things differently. We don't. Mr. Dicks. But do you need both limits? If you limited just the money and then said to the manager "Here's your budget”. Mr. HODEL. Well, without the limitation on personnel, the problem that we encounter-and I think management encounterswhen I was at Bonneville-I keep going back to that-we put a self-imposed ceiling on personnel. The purpose of that was to see to it that we didn't just assume that we needed to do something else by hiring more people. When the manager at Bonneville wanted to do something additional, he had to say, how does that relate to priority factors on other things that we're doing? He may then have to give up positions in other things in order to hold to the new initiative. My successor Mr. Monroe continued that policy for an additional three years. We thought it was quite effective and not unreasonable to impose a ceiling on an organization and say you've got to find a way to accomplish this. You did if you had the money and decided what your priorities were. We'd give you the money. Sometimes you'd do it through contract, and the private sector has advantages. Among other things, if it's not a permanent activity-one that continues 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year after year-we don't have to renew the contract. When we have employees on our system, we basically hire them for a career. It's not as easy for us to cut back. CONTRACT MAINTENANCE Mr. DICKS. Are we using a contractor for maintenance in the parks? Mr. HODEL. I hope so, where it's appropriate. Mr. DICKS. Are we or aren't we? Mr. HODEL. For the National Parks, because of their locations, in many cases this is not a possibility. We tested-using the figures now off the top of my head, and I don't have that data directly in front of me, but to my recollection-83 possible contracts to the private sector within the National Park System. When we got through, we ended up with 11 contracts out of that 83 where we could sign a contract for maintenance purposes. All the rest of them we either didn't get any bids or the bids were so excessive that we could do it within our personnel for less than the contract prices that came in to us. Mr. DICKS. You've got the A-76's and all? Mr. HODEL. Yes. Mr. DICKS. Thank you. Mr. YATES. Mr. Secretary, Mr. Dicks and Mr. Mott spoke about having to face personnel ceilings. There is a provision in Section 310 of our last Act which says under this act that employment shall not be subject to any personnel ceilings or other personnel restric |