Partnership Problems

s Park Service officials search for creative solutions to overcrowding and other problems, they are increasingly seeking to establish partnerships with state and local organizations in the public and private sectors. But the recent experience of one of the newest parks, Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, N.M., shows the limits of the new approach.

Ten years ago, portions of what is now the monument site in Albuquerque were strewn with trash and pockmarked with shotgun holes. But the site and its thousands of ancient Indian markings on black volcanic rock are considered sacred to American Indians, so in 1990, the 7,200-acre park was established from a patchwork of city and state land.

Out of necessity, Petroglyph National Monument was conceived-somewhat optimistically-as a model of joint federal-state-local stewardship. But the reality has turned out to be less rosy.

The underlying issue is the rapid growth that may one day turn Albuquerque into a sprawling Phoenix or Los Angeles. The city's population, now 700,000, is expected to expand from high-tech development, Sunbelt migration and high birth rates. Because the growth has been concentrated on the west side of the Rio Grande, cross-town traffic has been worsening, and the monument-now surrounded on several sides by new housing developments-is a major physical barrier.

So for several years the city has sought to force the Park Service to allow a proposed road, known as Paseo, through a narrow neck of the park. "There's no dispute among local transportation experts that this crossing is an integral part of the entire west-side transportation plan," says Patrick J. Rogers, an attorney who has worked for several pro-road entities.

Road proponents-who boast of a 51 percent to 34 percent advantage, according to a local newspaper poll earlier this year-consider the relatively small Paseo portion of the Petroglyph National Monument to have marginal historical value. But Park Service officials say the road-a four- or possibly six-lane thoroughfare set in a right-of-way big enough for eight-would irrevocably harm the character of the park.

So, citing the original joint-stewardship agreement, which gave the federal government authority over the site, the Park Service has steadfastly refused to allow the road. Indeed, today the existing part of Paseo ungracefully dead-ends into a partially graded portion of the park, right next to a Blockbuster Video store and a McDonald's.

Rogers expresses exasperation common among road advocates. "This is the old bait and switch," he says. "When the Park Service people first came out here, they said they were neutral on Paseo, then a year later, in 1993, they said there would be no Paseo."

With practical alternatives to Paseo diminishing, the Park Service has promised to comply with the road-building if Congress orders it to, and Congress is considering legislation on the matter. The bill is backed by most of New Mexico's high-ranking politicians, though foes of the road expect President Clinton to veto it if it gets that far.

In the meantime, federal officials are weighing what the standoff will mean for the Park Service, which has long intended to replicate the idea of joint stewardship in its future projects. The partnering model, first tested in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California, has been used with increasing frequency as the Park Service budget has been squeezed.

For instance, at the Boston Harbor National Recreation Area, created in 1996, the Park Service owns little of the land but cooperates with the city of Boston on managing the area. Two of the newest Park Service units, a park at San Francisco's Presidio and a memorial for victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, are both run by a collaboration between private trusts and the Park Service.

Dave Simon, the southwest regional director of the National Parks and Conservation Association and a leading foe of the Petroglyph National Monument road, praises the idea of partnering. There are far more cities, he says, that desperately want a national park nearby than there are cities that resent the Park Service's presence. But he acknowledges the dangers of the concept.

"Partnerships permit different entities to bring new resources to the table and achieve things collectively that they would not be able to do individually," Simon says. "But it's a brave new world. Defining the partnerships-who holds the authority-is a difficult and tricky thing."

Rogers' conclusion is even grimmer than Simon's. "There isn't much disagreement that this is an example of a partnership that's ill-conceived and not operating properly," he says. "I would tell a city that's negotiating with the Park Service that they have to think about whether 50 years down the road they want the federal government to make all the development and planning decisions in the area."

Even so, says John King, the Denver-based deputy director of the Park Service's intermountain region, "I think there's still a general recognition that we will need to work outside of park boundaries with gateway communities, and we certainly recognize that we don't have nearly the resources we need to do everything we want to do to protect the parks, maintain them in an appropriate fashion and make it a meaningful experience for the visitor. That recognition continues to move us to seek out partners when running the parks."

Louis Jacobson is a staff correspondent at National Journal.