New ONP leader speaks to business group
November 4th, 2008 - 6:14am
(Port Angeles) -- The new superintendent of Olympic National Park likes moving into the biggest restoration project in park service history.
Karen Gustin told the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce yesterday she had good reason to take the job after serving in Florida.
"I wanted to come back out west to a large national park where I started my career," said Gustin. The Elwha project is a project that is fascinating to me and one that I was interested in working on, plus I wanted to get back to the mountains."
Gustin said the Elwha River is unique among many rivers
in its drainage area to the Strait.
"The Elwha river drainage is a fairly pristine drainage in that there isn't a lot of outside development and it doesn't back up into another area that is being developed, it's headwaters are entirely within the park. We fully anticipate that restoration will be a success," said Gustin.
The project is getting between eleven and twelve
million dollars a year, but Gustin says it doesn't
come out of the Park Service budget.
"Money that we get for this program comes from the line-item construction program. It is a national park service-wide funding source that funds infrastructure and capital improvement projects in all the parks. So it is not effecting our park budget here," said Gustin.
Gustin also said the Hurricane Ridge Road has been re-paved,
and re-striped, with new culverts where needed, and
some shoulders reinforced. It'll be open this winter
on Friday, Saturday and Sundays, but with a new wrinkle.
Drivers will be required to carry chains, to allow for
safer driving coming down, if there are sudden snow storms.
Also, the park will try to restripe the parking area at the top, for more efficient parking, for more cars.
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