Deferred Maintenance of Federal Land Management Agencies: FY2005-FY2014 Estimates

Summary

Each of the four major federal land management agencies maintains tens of thousands of diverse assets, including roads, bridges, buildings, and water management structures. These agencies are the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), National Park Service (NPS), and Forest Service (FS). Congress and the Administration continue to focus on the agencies’ deferred maintenance in regard to these assets—in essence, the cost of any maintenance that was not done when it should have been or was scheduled to be. Deferred maintenance is often called the maintenance backlog.

In FY2014, the most recent year for which these estimates are available, the four agencies had a combined deferred maintenance estimated at between $16.31 billion and $21.43 billion, with a mid-range figure of $18.87 billion calculated by the Congressional Research Service. This figure includes $11.50 billion (61%) in deferred maintenance for NPS, $5.10 billion (27%) for FS, $1.53 billion (8%) for FWS, and $0.74 billion (4%) for BLM. The estimates reflect project costs but exclude indirect costs.

Over the past decade (FY2005-FY2014), the total deferred maintenance for the four agencies increased by $1.33 billion in current dollars, from $17.54 billion to $18.87 billion, or 8%. Both the BLM and NPS estimates increased, whereas the FWS and FS estimates decreased. By contrast, in constant dollars the total deferred maintenance estimate for the four agencies decreased from FY2005 to FY2014 by $4.53 billion, from $23.40 billion to $18.87 billion, or 19%. The BLM estimate increased, and estimates for the other three agencies decreased.

In each fiscal year, NPS had the largest portion of the total deferred maintenance, considerably more than any other agency. FS consistently had the second-largest share, followed by FWS and then BLM. Throughout the past decade, the asset class that included roads typically comprised the largest portion of each agency’s deferred maintenance.

Congressional debate has focused on varied issues, including the level and sources of funds needed to reduce deferred maintenance, whether agencies are efficiently using existing funding, how to balance the maintenance of existing infrastructure with the acquisition of new assets, whether disposal of assets is desirable given limited funding, and the priority of maintaining infrastructure relative to other government functions.

Still other questions relate to why deferred maintenance estimates have fluctuated over time. These fluctuations are likely the result of many factors, among them the following:

Agencies have refined methods of defining and quantifying the maintenance needs of their assets.

Levels of funding for maintenance, including funding to address the maintenance backlog, vary from year to year.

The asset portfolios of the agencies change, with acquisitions and disposals affecting the number, type, size, age, and location of agency assets.

Economic conditions, including costs of services and products, fluctuate.

The extent to which these and other factors affected changes in each agency’s maintenance backlog over the past decade is not entirely clear. In some cases, comprehensive information is not readily available or has not been examined.