LETTER TO THE SUPERINTENDENT

from Greg Streveler

Ms. Tomie Lee, Superintendent

Glacier Bay National Park

Gustavus, AK.

Dear Tomie,

I have been trying to let this slide, not really knowing what you were up against, but successive trips through the war zone to the park the last few weeks have finally precipitated this note.  Please accept the following as a friendly plea for different priorities

down the line.

Tomie, the road reconstruction is vast overkill and vastly wasteful.  Overkill in that what we needed, if anything, was slight widening, and raising of the bed in the wet meadow portion. Paving would have been all right but hardly mandatory.  All of this could have been done without too much change to the essential character of the road as it was.  Vegetation had come to peace with it, and one had the feeling of a rather intimate corridor through the natural world, an appropriate introduction to the main visitor experience at Bartlett Cove.  Now, it will look like most modern roads in America -- too big, too disruptive, too disconnected from its surroundings.

Wasteful in the vast mobilization of machinery, mega fuel consumption, and the huge quantities of usable timber and firewood that were sent up in smoke.

I have heard that it "had" to be done the way it was, to obtain Federal highway funds. Is it really true that there can be no deference to aesthetics, appropriate scale, avoidance of waste in a national park? If not in a national park, then where?  If you were held to these standards, was the option of the status quo considered?

I write this not to bitch, but because there is a pattern here, Tomie, that you are certainly not responsible for, but which you could perhaps help to change in the future. We have endured a series of construction overkills recently, to the point that they have become a more-or-less yearly routine. The dock and employee housing are among the most glaring.  Overdone, costly, wasteful, disruptive to the natural landscape.  Showing little deference to their location in a national park.  In recent years, I have put a lot of effort into helping Dick Levitt design the most sensitive possible hydro project for Falls Creek, (and in the process received a lot of advice from DOI on what we might consider in that vein). It is discouraging to see so little of the same reasoning applied to the park's own projects, right in the heart of the visitor experience.

Sincerely,  Greg Streveler

POSTSCRIPT

I met with Tomie several days later to discuss my letter.  She was emphatic that she has tried to keep development moderate and appropriate at Bartlett Cove.  As an example, she nixed the idea, pushed by the Delegation and Goldbelt, for a "visitor center" that really was a retail outlet for tourist items. Regarding the road, she confirmed that the project was subject to Federal highway standards.  She did her best to tweak the standards, and was able to reduce the total clearing width a bit, then backed off in order to get the project finished.  I was left with two conclusions: 1) the momentum for big projects at the park is considerable and hard to derail; 2) if we did a better job of bird-dogging project designs in their early stages, we would find Tomie open to consideration of our thoughts.