chumley wrote:The undistorted truth is that despite big cuts to the
proposed budget overall, it specifically includes
more money for construction and maintenance.
According to DOI, the proposal would provide $129 million, an increase of $13 million over current levels, for construction needs, and $685.9 million for facility operations and maintenance across the National Park System.
And for some reason, you've chosen to ignore the following text in the very article that you linked (emphasis mine):
Jeff Olson, chief of communications for the park, said the replacement of the pipeline is near the top of the list for the NPS on a national level. The project has been placed in the agency’s Green Book, a list of projects and their expense for the NPS as a whole.
Olson said money has been allocated for the project beginning in 2019 and continuing for three years. The park will match 50 percent of the funding through monies collected as part of park and concession fees.
I'm guessing you don't know much about how the federal budget works. Everything you have here is either misleading or wrong--let's not forget who is in charge of NPS now.
The US budget is appropriated annually (theoretically--in practice we just get continuing resolutions every few months). So saying that money has been "allocated" for a project that's supposed to start in 2019 is pure BS. It's nothing more than a hope that a future budget appropriation will include that money. Each year, NPS puts in a proposal for how much money they want. Then the White House submits a budget to Congress. Then Congress ignores all of that and does what they want. So what NPS wants is no guarantee of anything, and I would bet against it.
The article I linked to said that the NPS put the pipeline replacement in its Green Book--that's its budget request for the next year. Congress is not likely to give NPS much more money than they have asked for, and what Trump is asking for is a 13% decrease in NPS funding vs last year. It's hard to imagine NPS funding a pipeline replacement if their budget gets cut that much or stays flat.
Did you look at the NPS green book for next year Chumley? I did. Guess how much they have theoretically allocated for the $120 million pipeline replacement for next year? $16.6 million. And then the following year when construction is supposed to start? $17.8 million. And then the next year? $17.9 million. So even NPS's own budget request, which may well represent an upper limit on how much is available for this project, doesn't include realistic amounts to get the work done.
Get your figures straight. If Congress passes a budget that includes the pipeline, then I'll happily admit to being wrong. Until then, everything you said above is an aspiration at best.