WASHINGTON – Crumbling sidewalks near the Jefferson Memorial are sinking into the Tidal Basin. Reflecting pools are filled with green, smelly water. And millions of visitors have trampled the soil into virtual concrete where grass can't grow.
The National Mall is in danger of becoming a national disgrace.
"It does not deserve the name 'National Mall,'" said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's nonvoting member of Congress. "We ought to call it something else until it looks decent."
The Obama administration recently steered $55 million in economic stimulus money toward repairs, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says that's only a down payment on the nearly $400 million needed to fix up a national park that draws more visitors than Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite combined.
An Associated Press analysis of congressional spending since 2005 found the mall has been at a disadvantage in competing for extra funds doled out by lawmakers, compared with sites that are represented by powerful members of Congress. The mall is in Washington, D.C., which has no vote in the House or Senate.
Last year, when dozens of ducks and ducklings died of avian botulism because the water in a mall pool near the Capitol was so fetid, and as urgent repairs were needed to stop the Jefferson Memorial's sea wall from sinking into the mud, the Senate killed a $3.5 million earmark for the mall.
Instead, funding went to projects back home. All told, Congress sent home more than $181 million in earmarks through the park service budget last year — an election year — according to data compiled by the group Taxpayers for Common Sense and analyzed by the AP. Nearly half that money was driven by lawmakers who were on the House and Senate appropriations committees.
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"Because the mall is owned by nobody, even though it is this gem for many Americans, it gets short shrift," he said.
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Yet Congress invests in sod and flower beds on its own grounds at the Capitol, which are kept carefully manicured, even as the mall — which runs 2 miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial — has languished.
Congress employs about 1,900 workers to maintain its buildings and 450 acres, while the National Park Service has about 200 maintenance workers for the 650-acre mall and memorials.
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