Some Highlights of 1965: Outdoor Recreation

Interest in providing more outdoor recreation, preserving more scenery, and, in general, caring for those aspects of land use that do not result in commodities shows little sign of slackening. The White House Conference on Natural Beauty, acquisition of more land for outdoor recreation areas, passage of state bond proposals, congressional authorization of specific measures to deal with various environmental quality problems, the Highway Beautification Act, and other actions, all point in the direction of greater investment and control of land use for the purpose of providing amenity resources.

Nineteen sixty-five was the first year of substantial operation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. By and large, it was a year of accomplishment, but it also brought frustrations not uncommon in the launching of a large new program in resource management and development.

Three major recreation areas in the populous East were among outdoor facilities newly authorized by Congress during the year: the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; Assateague Island National Seashore, in Maryland and Virginia; and the Spruce Knob—Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, in West Virginia. Bills dealing with many other park and recreation areas, especially lakeshores and ocean dunes, have passed either the Senate or the House or been the subject of hearings along with several minor additions of historical interest.

These moves, which attest to the federal government's continuing desire to protect and develop areas with scenic, historical, and recreational values, have led to a major problem: the rate at which these areas are being authorized, during 1965 at least, has far exceeded federal funds available for these purposes. Consequently, if the 89th Congress authorizes more areas in its second session, as seems most probable, either the Land and Water Conservation Fund will have to be mortgaged yet further into the future, or a new source of financing will have to be found.

The first year of the Fund's operation also turned up problems in the collection of fees and charges at federal recreation areas. One of them was that the sale of recreation stickers represented only a small fraction of what had been anticipated. Others related to uniformity of charges. Numerous problems of administration, some not unconnected with the disappointing sale of stickers, came to the fore, driving home the lesson that the problem of fees and charges does not end with the decision to impose them. As the nation moves further in the direction of user charges, levels of fees and methods of collection are likely to require decisions equally important in their consequences as decisions to charge in the first place.

Important in the operation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund is a requirement that individual states prepare state outdoor recreation plans. During the year, the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation provisionally accepted such plans from more than half the states, so that funding could be made to them for individual project acquisition and development. On the whole, the state planning efforts have taken a long step forward, far exceeding in almost every case any work done previously on formal planning of recreation areas at the state level Often these efforts have revealed to state agencies great imbalances in their recreation development and have pointed the way to a more effective allocation of acquisition and development funds. As the activity comes to be seen more as a continuing process than a one-time measure to satisfy requirements for receiving matching grants, one may hope for revisions that will improve the the quality of planning.

Another important area of recreation development continues to be the US Department of Agriculture's program of encouraging rural recreation development by private operators. The Food and Agriculture Act of 1965 provides special incentives for farmers who open their land for the pursuit of other activities such as hunting, fishing, hiking, and trapping. The USDA program is designed to (1) take land out of farming, (2) provide incomes to to rural people, and (3) provide more outdoor recreation opportunities. Barring a drastic reverse in crop production policy, these three goals appear to point in the right direction and, in theory at least, seem to be compatible. In practice, many private recreation areas thus encouraged are running into difficulty. Often these enterprises are meeting with little or no commercial success. On occasion they have resulted in severe financial losses.

Perhaps the dynamic nature of recreation demand has led to careless optimism. Such factors as markets for particular enterprises and management skills are all too often Ignored. The mere fact that demand for outdoor recreation is growing on all fronts is no guarantee that individual operators can make a success of outdoor recreation enterprises. The department of Agriculture has given this program a great deal of encouragement and publicity, but has perhaps put too generous a stamp of approval on all sorts of recreation enterprises. Too little yet is known about the factors that spell success or failure.

It is an encouraging sign that the department's research to isolate such factors is becoming more effective. Extension of the resulting information in to individual operators, actual and potential, is increasing. This could lead to more rational development of recreation.

Recreation associated with water projects has shared in the expansion of outdoor recreation as a whole to such an extent that its relative importance among the different aims of multipurpose water resource projects has increased, even though the size of all water resource expenditure plans has been steeply rising. The promise of rationalizing both developments by introducing a measure of local involvement is among the elements that in 1965 led to the enactment of the Federal Water Project Recreation Act.

Defined as "an act to provide uniform policies with respect to recreation and fish and wildlife benefits and costs of federal multipurpose water resource projects," the intent of the Act, passed last July, is threefold:

• That in planning any federal water resource project full consideration be given to its outdoor recreation and fish and wildlife enhancement opportunities.
• That recreation potential in such projects be developed in coordination with projected and planned federal, state, or local public recreation development.
• That construction agencies encourage non-federal public bodies to administer land and water areas for recreation and fish and wildlife enhancement.

The key feature of the Act provides that where non-federal bodies agree to administer land and water areas pursuant to the plan for the development of the project, they are to bear not less than one-half the separable recreation and fish and wildlife enhancement costs of the project and all costs of operation, maintenance, and replacement incurred for these purposes. The Act carries a potential direct sharing of project costs by users in its provision that fee systems may be instituted on the projects to collect the monies both to repay the non-federal cost share on an interest-bearing basis and to meet at least some of the operating and maintenance costs.

There is a twofold promise here that this Act could result in a sharpening of federal recreation investment decisions due to improved information on the willingness of beneficiaries to pay the costs of recreation projects. The fact that state and local agencies are made responsible for meeting half of the incremental costs of water recreation projects will force federal plans to meet a realistic test of willingness to pay that has been wholly lacking in benefit-cost analysis of recreation projects to date.

Should fee systems be adopted on any wide scale as a means of meeting non-federal costs, and should these systems be operated in a manner that approaches open market pricing behavior, better demand data than has ever been obtainable in the outdoor recreation field will begin to be accumulated.

It is not clear, however, just exactly what kinds of agencies can be expected to take advantage of the opportunities offered by this Act. In many instances federal water projects are located in rural areas where local and even state financial resources are already strained. Even if the states were to assume responsibility for the non-federal portion of the costs, the size of many projects would swamp the budgets of the state recreation agencies. On the other hand, if the state and local participants are to be bailed out by grants from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the promise of improved rationality of decisions vanishes. Moreover, the notion of meeting costs through fees must face the obstacles of emotional arguments in favor of free outdoor recreation. This may motivate officials in charge of setting user fees to hold fees down or avoid them altogether.

There are features in the Act that may make it advantageous to the non-federal agencies to abstain from cost sharing. First of all, in the absence of a cost-sharing agreement the federal agency is required to provide such recreation facilities as are required for the public health and safety.

Another advantage to withholding participation may be the provision that the construction agency can acquire and hold such lands as will protect the recreation potential of the project for up to ten years after initial operation of the project. It may be in the interests of the non-federal agencies to pursue the strategy of delay on the theory that after the project is completed and the recreation demand at the project tested, federal or state grants-in-aid to finance their share of the recreation costs will be forthcoming.

To the extent that the Act is aimed at reducing the massive federal share in water resource development, is it enough to place only recreation development, among the several important project purposes, on a substantial cost-sharing basis?