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| COMMERCIALIZING THE CANYON | |
 August 9, 1999 
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Ted Robbins of KUAT-Tucson, reports on the latest plan approved by the U.S. Forest Service to develop land near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
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TED ROBBINS: When Teddy Roosevelt stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon
in 1905, he called it "the one great sight which every American
should see." It's not likely he meant all at the same time. Almost
five million people now visit Grand Canyon National Park every year,
putting a strain on roads, natural resources, and park employees. Tourism
at the Grand Canyon started in 1901 when the railroad began delivering
a few thousand people a year. By 1914, cars were already showing up.
By 1951, the |
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| Too many visitors? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ROB ARNBERGER, Superintendent, Grand Canyon TED ROBBINS: Twenty years ago, the Park Service closed one road to private vehicles, the popular West Rim Drive. Shuttle buses take visitors to viewpoints. Beginning in 2002, the shuttles will replace cars on all roads within the park. Visitors with hotel reservations inside the park will leave their cars at their hotel. Everyone else will leave their cars on this land outside the park and ride a privately funded light rail system to the park's new visitor center. Work has already begun. GUIDE: Hello. How is everybody? Good. Welcome to Grand Canyon. Where are we from?
KATE ALLEN: They're transit huts. But I don't know how they got the name the dumpsters - I think it's because they're green. TED ROBBINS: Kate Allen's situation is indicative of substandard housing throughout the national park system. The Park Service bought these trailers as surplus in 1961 after the Bureau of Reclamation finished using them for workers building nearby Glen Canyon Dam. The rent is cheap: $110 a month. But Kate Allen has no choice. There is no private housing option inside the park and no other government housing available.
TED ROBBINS: Rob Arnberger, however, thinks it's a disgrace. |
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| Developing the perimeter | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ROB ARNBERGER: I have some of my employees
living in some of the most deplorable housing found in the entire national
park system. And that has been -- it's one of the few things people can
agree on here with my employees, or in Congress, or in the administration.
The Grand Canyon is an embarrassment regarding the housing that we put
some of our employees in.
TED ROBBINS: Congress appropriated money for new housing here during the early 1990's, but the park is still about 250 units short. To alleviate that shortage and to provide visitor services not available inside the park, the U.S. Forest Service approved a plan to develop 300 acres just outside the park, perhaps the first community of its kind. Teri Cleeland is the district ranger. TERI CLEELAND: This land that we're walking on right here is slated
in Alternative "H" if the land exchange occurs TED ROBBINS: The controversial Canyon Forest Village, Alternative H, would contrast with the small town of Tusayan, a hodgepodge of hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops now outside the Grand Canyon. The privately-owned village would be a so-called green community. To save ground water that feeds the Grand Canyon ecosystem, for instance, two-thirds of the village water would be recycled. The remaining third would be brought in by train. Canyon Forest Village is the brainchild of Scottsdale, Arizona, developer Tom DePaolo, who knew he had to at least overcome an image problem.
TED ROBBINS: So DePaolo went to eight environmental organizations, such as the Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Arizona, where Brad Ack is program director. He went to national organizations such as the Wilderness Society and the Environmental Defense Fund. He got them to support Canyon Forest Village. BRAD ACK: You know there's going to be development out there. The only way to stop that would be to buy every piece of private land in the region at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. So we could hold out for some ideal position-- no development-- and lose, which we've done over and over in the past, say no and lose, or we could find something to say yes to and win. TED ROBBINS: They have not won yet. Tusayan land and business owners, such as restaurant owner Eric Gueissaz, bitterly oppose Canyon Forest Village.
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| The battle to save the community | ||||||||||||||||||||
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TED ROBBINS: In reality, the town of Tusayan is owned by roughly a half dozen families who have been able to build with little oversight to suit the demand for 30 years. Few community services exist. Tusayan leaders now want to build their own community facilities. The town will continue fighting Canyon Forest Village through local government and, if necessary, the courts. It's a situation Brad Ack finds unusual, to say the least. BRAD ACK: To the best of my TED ROBBINS: A gateway community, light rail, no cars. Much of the management plan will use private money, but implementing the public portion will still cost taxpayers $300 million. Some say it's too grand a scheme for the Grand Canyon. Since the mid-1990's, the number of visitors here at the Grand Canyon has actually been flat, a little less than five million people a year. The Asian economic crisis may have kept some international visitors away. Publicity about overcrowding-- it's been in most of the guidebooks-- may have kept domestic visitors away as well. TED ROBBINS: Is this still necessary then? Or why is it necessary? ROB ARNBERGER: Yes. Well, if you want to make the assumption for the next 20 years, for the next 50 years, that visitation will always be at 4.5 million people, then I suppose you might make the case that there's no reason to do anything other than to manage what we've got, to stay stagnant. Well, stagnant is death for this resource and stagnant is the eventual loss of a visitor experience here. The Grand Canyon is one of the most visited natural sites on the face of the earth. And we have to plan for the future, not for just what we're seeing here today. But we have to plan for the year 2010, for the year 2020. TED ROBBINS: The second part of Teddy Roosevelt's |
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parking
lot at the canyon's premiere hotel, El Tovar, was filled, and it's remained
filled ever since. Six thousand private vehicles enter the park on a
typical day in July and August-- 6,000 vehicles competing for 1,500
parking spaces along the canyon's South rim -- one space for every four
cars. It's a scene being repeated at other large national parks as well--
Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion. Grand Canyon Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger
says the park experience is subtly being eroded into a parking experience.
Park:
We want people to come to parks, but parks and that park experience
should not be the same experience that you have driving down your street
in Elm Street U.S.A. or going to your Wal-Mart. 
TED
ROBBINS: Many of the Grand Canyon's 4,000 public and private employees
have been waiting for relief for years from the strain caused by increased
tourism. Kate Allen recently began working here as a museum technician.
At the moment, she's cataloguing snake specimens. When she finishes
her day, she goes home to one of a number of trailers, nicknamed dumpsters.
KATE
ALLEN: I like to live at the Grand Canyon. That's a lot of fun. So I
don't really mind that I live in "the dumpster," and my roommate
moved out, so now I have it to myself; that makes it a lot more pleasant.
to be part of Canyon Forest Village, which is a planned development
community for the Grand Canyon area; it will include retail, hotels,
housing, and community infrastructure.
TOM
DE PAOLO: We recognized we're developers and as such would not have
a high degree of credibility with the public. It was important to find
groups and individuals who have clearly at the top of their chart, if
you will, that desire for high standards. 
ERIC
GUEISSAZ, Tusayan Restaurant Owner: There's always a certain fear. I
mean, if suddenly you have a small community as it is today that is
here and then suddenly you have a community that all of a sudden triples
the number of population in the area, certainly it's competition. 
knowledge,
this is the first time a group of environmental organizations are supporting
a gateway development near a national park while the opposition is largely
from the real estate and developer and hotelier community. It's kind
of turned the world on its head. 
admonition
to see the Grand Canyon was to "do nothing to mar its grandeur.
Keep it for your children," he said, "your children's children."
That balance between protecting the grandeur and accommodating the growing
number of people who want to experience it is the major challenge facing
those who manage not only the Grand Canyon but all of America's national
parks. The Grand Canyon management plan may be grandiose; but if it
works, it may be a model for achieving that balance in the next century.
