Waterfront property almost always is treasured, and almost always carries a premium price. Unfortunately, the National Park Service has taken those adages a bit too far for an agency that is supposed to preserve public lands for the general public.
According to the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General, for roughly the past 30 years a handful of NPS units in the East have been granting exclusive use of park lands to private organizations.
We found that NPS has allowed private individuals or exclusive clubs to monopolize desirable locations near major metropolitan areas for decades to the exclusion of the general public, although we could not identify the extent of this permitting, the OIG concludes in a report dated April 10. Some of the clubs charge high membership fees or limit the number of people who can become members. NPS continues to renew the permits for these exclusive clubs and has kept the $2.6 million in permit fees received over the 4-year period of our review instead of remitting the funds to the U.S. Treasury.
[Later in the Article]
In the case of Gateway NRA, the Silver Gull Beach Club and Breezy Point Surf Club charged membership fees ranging from $315 for a child to $770 for an adult couple for a three-month summer season. Additionally, related cabana rental fees ranged from $400 to as much as $9,999 for the season.
Ironically, in Gateway's 1979 general management plan Park Service officials pledged to remove the private cabanas and replace them with cabanas and locker facilities open to the general public. Five years later, in 1984, the NPS regional director for the area wrote that "current membership practices will have to be discontinued. Clubs will be opened to the public on an equal opportunity basis."
Yet, according to the OIG report, still nothing was done.
Additionally, according to the OIG report, Gateway officials have allowed the Rockaway Point Yacht Club to operate "on public lands for over 30 years and continues to operate, although the permit expired in 2004."
6 years ago
