Three Reasons to Celebrate the Great American Outdoors Act
Jan Plotczyk • September 15, 2020
The Eastern Shore has always been a place to get away outdoors—with plenty of hunting and fishing, boating and swimming, hiking and birding. Federal investments to enhance these opportunities are cause for celebration.
The Great American Outdoors Act will do just that. The act was passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and was signed into law on August 4, 2020.
According to Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, an original co-sponsor of the legislation, the act will “improve Americans’ access to public lands, ensure the continued preservation of outdoor spaces, and promote economic growth in outdoor recreation.”
Even though our 1st Congressional District Representative, Andy Harris, voted against it, the Eastern Shore will benefit from this new law.
Here are three reasons to be happy about the new law.
1. Our national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges will receive funds to make crucial repairs to deteriorating facilities and roads, and undertake badly needed structural improvements.
The act provides $1.9 billion a year for five years to take care of badly needed and overdue maintenance projects at national parks and wildlife refuges. These include improvements to visitor facilities, campgrounds, trails, and roads. Almost half of all paved roads in national parks are in fair or poor condition, and more than half the maintenance funds are for improvements to roads, bridges, and trails.
The National Park Service estimates there are $292 million in deferred maintenance needs in Maryland, including $9.4 million at Assateague National Seashore in Worcester County. (The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Site in Dorchester County is new enough that it does not have deferred maintenance needs.)
The National Wildlife System will receive 5 percent of the maintenance money, $95 million yearly, for repairs to visitor centers, boardwalks, signage, and trails. National wildlife refuges on the Eastern Shore include Blackwater in Dorchester County and Eastern Neck in Kent County, both part of the Chesapeake Marshlands National Wildlife Refuge Complex.
2. The act ensures that Americans will continue to be able to enjoy our public lands permanently.
The act provides permanent funding of $900 million each year for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This money will be used for land acquisition for national, state, and local parks, wildlife refuges, and other outdoor areas.
Over the past 50 years, LWCF funds have been used to protect places such as Assateague and Blackwater, and to ensure recreational access for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities. Funds also support state Program Open Space projects that provide increased access to state and local parks. Forest Legacy Program grants have helped protect working forests in places such as Snow Hill’s Coastal Bay project. State assistance grants have been used for hundreds of state and local park projects, including Conquest Waterfront Preserve in Queen Anne’s County.
3. The Eastern Shore will benefit economically.
“Research on the impact of the LWCF shows that $1 spent generates $4 in economic value from natural resource goods and services alone.” ~Senator Van Hollen
Outdoor recreation is an important part of the Maryland and Eastern Shore economies. The Outdoor Industry Association reports that in Maryland, outdoor recreation is responsible for $14 billion in consumer spending; 109,000 jobs that generate $4.4 billion in wages and salaries; and nearly $951 million annually in state and local tax revenue. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that each year over 2.7 million people hunt, fish, or enjoy wildlife-watching in Maryland, and contribute over $1.6 billion in wildlife recreation spending to the state economy.
A good portion of this state activity takes place on the Eastern Shore. Residents of Maryland’s 1st District spend $1.43 billion on outdoor recreation each year, and out-of-state visitors contribute hundreds of millions more.
A U.S. Department of Fish & Wildlife Service report from 2017 assessed the economic impact of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Dorchester and Wicomico counties that year. With a visitor count of 223,000 people, visitors spent $5.8 million on food, lodging, transportation, etc. in the two counties. In addition, recreational spending in local communities was responsible for $7.8 million in economic output, about 63 jobs, $2.3 million in employment income, and $667,000 in total state and local tax revenue.
As indoor entertainment options have narrowed during the coronavirus pandemic, more people are turning to the outdoors. Public lands belong to us; this new legislation ensures we’ll safeguard them and enjoy them forever.
Jan Plotczyk spent 25 years as a statistician with the federal government, at the Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics. She retired to Rock Hall and spends as much time outdoors as she can.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
More than 30,000 of our neighbors in Maryland’s first congressional district will lose their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid because of provisions in the GOP’s heartless tax cut and spending bill passed last week.
Right now, Congress is working on a fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs in order to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
The House Agriculture Committee recently voted, along party lines, to advance legislation that would cut as much as $300 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, helping more than 41 million people in the U.S. pay for food. With potential cuts this large, it helps to know who benefits from this program in Maryland, and who would lose this assistance. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled data on SNAP beneficiaries by congressional district, cited below, and produced the Maryland state datasheet , shown below. In Maryland, in 2023-24, 1 in 9 people lived in a household with SNAP benefits. In Maryland’s First Congressional District, in 2023-24: Almost 34,000 households used SNAP benefits. Of those households, 43% had at least one senior (over age 60). 29% of SNAP recipients were people of color. 15% were Black, non-Hispanic, higher than 11.8% nationally. 6% were Hispanic (19.4% nationally). There were 24,700 total veterans (ages 18-64). Of those, 2,200 lived in households that used SNAP benefits (9%). The CBPP SNAP datasheet for Maryland is below. See data from all the states and download factsheets here.
Apparently, some people think that the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is a foregone conclusion, and that the struggle over the budget and Trump’s agenda is over and done. Not true. On Sunday night, the bill — given the alternate name “Big Bad Bullsh*t Bill” by the Democratic Women’s Caucus — was voted out of the House Budget Committee. The GOP plan is to pass this legislation in the House before Memorial Day. But that’s not the end of it. As Jessica Craven explained in her Chop Wood Carry Water column: “Remember, we have at least six weeks left in this process. The bill has to: Pass the House, Then head to the Senate where it will likely be rewritten almost completely, Then be passed there, Then be brought back to the House for reconciliation, And then, if the House changes that version at all, Go back to the Senate for another vote.” She adds, “Every step of that process is a place for us to kill it.” The bill is over a thousand pages long, and the American people will not get a chance to read it until it has passed the House. But, thanks to 5Calls , we know it includes:
Let's talk about our Eastern Shore Delegation, the representatives who are supposed to fight for our nine Shore counties in Annapolis, and what they actually got up to this session.
For the first time in recent memory, Virginia Democrats have candidates running in all 100 House of Delegates districts — a milestone party leaders and grassroots organizers say reflects rising momentum as President Donald Trump’s second term continues to galvanize opposition.
