BAKER CITY HERALD • THuRsDAY, JunE 23, 2022 A7
THE WEST
Yellowstone flooding rebuild could take years, cost billions
BY LINDSAY WHITEHURST
AND BRIAN MELLEY
Associated Press
Created in 1872 as the United States
was recovering from the Civil War,
Yellowstone was the first of the na-
tional parks that came to be referred
to as America’s best idea. Now, the
home to gushing geysers, thundering
waterfalls and some of the country’s
most plentiful and diverse wildlife is
facing its biggest challenge in decades.
Floodwaters last week wiped out
numerous bridges, washed out miles
of roads and closed the park as it ap-
proached peak tourist season during
its 150th anniversary celebration.
Nearby communities were swamped
and hundreds of homes flooded as the
Yellowstone River and its tributaries
raged.
The scope of the damage is still be-
ing tallied by Yellowstone officials, but
based on other national park disasters,
it could take years and cost upwards
of $1 billion to rebuild in an environ-
mentally sensitive landscape where
construction season only runs from
the spring thaw until the first snowfall.
Based on what park officials have
revealed and Associated Press images
and video taken from a helicopter,
the greatest damage seemed to be to
roads, particularly on the highway
connecting the park’s north entrance
in Gardiner, Montana, to the park’s
offices in Mammoth Hot Springs.
Large sections of the road were un-
dercut and washed away as the Gard-
ner River jumped its banks. Perhaps
hundreds of footbridges on trails may
have been damaged or destroyed.
“This is not going to be an easy re-
build,” Superintendent Cam Sholly
said early in the week as he high-
lighted photos of massive gaps of
roadway in the steep canyon. “I don’t
think it’s going to be smart to invest
potentially, you know, tens of millions
of dollars, or however much it is, into
repairing a road that may be subject to
seeing a similar flooding event in the
future.”
Disasters in other parks
Re-establishing a human imprint
in a national park is always a delicate
operation, especially as a changing
climate makes natural disasters more
Samuel Wilson/Getty Images-TNS
The Northeast Entrance Road is shown severely damaged following historic flooding
in Yellowstone National Park that forced it to shut down in June 2022.
likely. Increasingly intense wildfires
are occurring, including one last year
that destroyed bridges, cabins and
other infrastructure in Lassen Volca-
nic National Park in Northern Cali-
fornia.
Flooding has already done exten-
sive damage in other parks and is a
threat to virtually all the more-than
400 national parks, a report by The
Rocky Mountain Climate Organiza-
tion found in 2009.
Mount Rainier National Park
in Washington state closed for six
months after the worst flooding in
its history in 2006. Damage to roads,
trails, campgrounds and buildings was
estimated at $36 million.
Yosemite Valley in California’s Yo-
semite National Park has flooded
several times, but suffered its worst
damage 25 years ago when heavy
downpours on top of a large snow-
pack — a scenario similar to the Yel-
lowstone flood — submerged camp-
grounds, flooded hotel rooms, washed
out bridges and sections of road, and
knocked out power and sewer lines.
The park was closed for more than
two months.
Congress allocated $178 million in
emergency funds – a massive sum for
park infrastructure at the time – and
additional funding eventually sur-
passed $250 million, according to a
2013 report.
But the rebuilding effort once es-
timated to last four to five years
dragged out for 15, due in part to en-
vironmental lawsuits over a protected
river corridor and a long bureaucratic
planning and review process.
It’s not clear if Yellowstone would
face the same obstacles, though re-
constructing the road that runs near
Mammoth Hot Springs, where steam-
ing water bubbles up over an other-
worldly series of stone terraces, pres-
ents a challenge.
It’s created by a unique natural for-
mation of underground tubes and
vents that push the hot water to the
surface, and would be just one of
many natural wonders crews would
have to be careful not to disturb, said
Brett Hartl, government affairs direc-
tor at the Center for Biological Diver-
sity.
Along with the formation itself,
there are also microbes and insects
that thrive in the environment found
almost nowhere else. And the park
will need to avoid damaging any ar-
chaeological or cultural artifacts in
the area with a rich Native American
history.
“They’ll have to look at all the re-
sources the park is designed to pro-
tect, and try to do this project as care-
fully as possible, but they’re also going
to try to go fairly quickly,” Hartl said.
Having to reroute the roadway that
hugged the Gardner River could be an
opportunity to better protect the wa-
terway and the fish and other species
that thrive there from oil and other
microscopic pollution that comes
from passing vehicles, Hartl said.
“The river will be healthier for it,”
he said.
The Yosemite flood was seen by the
park as an opportunity to rethink its
planning and not necessarily rebuild
in the same places, said Frank Dean,
president and chief executive of the
Yosemite Conservancy and a former
park ranger.
Some facilities were relocated out-
side the flood plain and some camp-
grounds that had been submerged
in the flood were never restored. At
Yosemite Lodge, cabins that had been
slated for removal in the 1980s were
swamped and had to be removed.
“The flood took them all out like a
precision strike,” Dean said. “I’m not
going to say it’s a good thing, but prov-
idence came in and made the decision
for them.”
Summer tourism
Yellowstone’s recovery comes as a
rapidly growing number of people
line up to visit the country’s national
parks, even as a backlog of deferred
maintenance budget grows into tens
of billions of dollars. The park was al-
ready due for funding from the Great
American Outdoors Act, a 2020 law
passed by Congress that authorizes
nearly $3 billion for maintenance and
other projects on public lands.
Now it will need another infusion
of money for more pressing repairs
that Emily Douce, director of oper-
ations and park funding at National
Parks Conservation Association, esti-
mated could hit at least $1 billion.
The southern half of the park is
expected to reopen next week, allow-
ing visitors to flock to Old Faithful,
3 of 5 park entrances reopen
WAPITI, Wyo. (AP) — Hundreds
of cars, trucks and recreational ve-
hicles were backed up in long lines
at entrances to Yellowstone Na-
tional Park as it partially reopened
Wednesday morning, June 22 fol-
lowing record floods that reshaped
the park’s rivers and canyons, wiped
out numerous roads and left some
areas famous for their wildlife view-
ing inaccessible, possibly for months
to come.
Park managers raised the gates
at three of Yellowstone’s five en-
trances for the first time since June
13. Some of the premier attractions
at America’s first national park will
again be viewable, including Old
Faithful geyser. The wildlife-rich
northern half of the park will be
shuttered until at least early July,
and key routes into the park remain
severed near the Montana tourist
towns of Gardiner, Red Lodge and
Cooke City.
the rainbow colored Grand Prismatic
Spring, and the Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone and its majestic waterfall.
But the flood-damaged northern
end may not reopen this year, de-
priving visitors from seeing Tower
Fall and Lamar Valley, one of the best
places in the world to see wolves and
grizzly bears. Some days during the
high season, an animal sighting can
lead to thousands of people parked on
the side of the road hoping to catch a
glimpse.
Whether some of these areas are
reopened will depend on how quickly
washed-out roads can be repaired,
downed trees can be removed and
mudslides cleared.
Maintaining the approximately 466
miles of roadway throughout the park
is a major job. Much of the roadway
originally was designed for stage-
coaches, said Kristen Brengel, senior
vice-president of public affairs for the
National Parks Conservation Associ-
ation.
“Part of the effort of the last couple
of decades has been to stabilize the
road to make it safe for heavier vehi-
cles to travel on it,” she said.
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