How the Park Service's Denver Service Center Restores Park Land

What the Denver Service Center does

The Denver Service Center (DSC) is the National Park Service's central office for planning, design and construction. At a park's request it supplies project management, technical expertise and contracting — acting as a steward for each project.

• It builds resilience and sustainability into Park Service projects: planning for the future, using sustainable processes in construction, and carrying out demolition aimed at ecological restoration.
• It is the main office carrying out projects funded by the Great American Outdoors Act's Legacy Restoration Fund, which tackles the parks' large maintenance backlog.
• It works to improve visitors' experience — from getting people into and out of parks to laying out campgrounds — while its architects and engineers weigh that against the health of the land.

Three projects show the approach.

Everglades: a boardwalk built for the next storm

The West Lake Trail after Hurricane Irma, 2017. NPS/Heidi Flugstad.

The new boardwalk on the West Lake Trail, Everglades National Park. NPS/Federico Acevedo.

DSC and Everglades National Park rebuilt the West Lake Trail, wrecked by Hurricane Irma in 2017. Funding came from Public Law 115-123, for parks badly hit by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

• The design plans for sea-level rise and stronger storms — the walking surface was raised to allow for future storm-surge uplift.
• Visitors can enjoy the water while the boardwalk keeps them off the plants and animals around it.
• Sustainable materials, a small footprint on the ground and efficient design kept the build climate-friendly.

Cuyahoga Valley: taking buildings down

Demolition at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Trees and other native plants will be planted once the vacant buildings are gone. NPS.

DSC is managing a GAOA-funded project to restore 12 acres of open space in Cuyahoga Valley National Park: removing vacant buildings and planting native trees, restoring the landscape and opening more room for recreation.

Most DSC work is building or rehabilitating, but demolition also cuts the deferred-maintenance backlog — and returning the land to its natural state is central to the park's restoration.

Delaware Water Gap: a wetland brought back

The man-made pond at the Watergate Recreation Site before restoration. NPS.

Restoration under way: the pond has been drained and its banks excavated to a suitable slope. NPS.

At Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, the Watergate Restoration Project is restoring the natural workings of wetlands, floodplains and a stream at the Watergate Recreation Site. It offsets harm from building the Susquehanna–Roseland power line in 2013–14, and is paid for in full by the utilities PSE&G and PPL Electric Utilities.

Much is done; work continues to:

• seed and plant native vegetation;
• remove man-made dams so the stream flows naturally;
• create new wildlife habitat;
• treat invasive plants so natives can thrive.

The bigger picture

These projects show what restoration is coming to mean on park lands. DSC's aim is to restore and protect the parks for people today and for future generations.

Sources

Based on "Denver Service Center Focuses on Protecting and Preserving NPS Resources," Denver Service Center, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.