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The administration of President Donald Trump has diverted at least $67 million in national park entrance fee revenue to finance beautification projects in Washington D.C., while parks like Acadia face a growing list of delayed maintenance needs.
The administration has redirected $60 million in entrance fee revenue to repair nine decorative fountains around Washington, which are eligible for receiving such revenue raised at national parks around the country. An additional $7 million has gone towards the controversial renovation of the capital’s 103-year-old Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to a recent New York Times analysis of a federal contracting database.
At Acadia, officials estimate $138 million is needed to cover deferred maintenance and repair projects, according to a 2025 Acadia National Park document that details its infrastructure investment needs. Of the backlog, $62 million is needed to maintain the park’s paved roads — Acadia’s greatest infrastructure need — followed by building repairs, which account for $45 million.
On top of deferred repairs, officials estimate the park spends $9.6 million annually on routine maintenance.
The park service’s total backlog nationwide stands at $23 billion, according to Todd Martin, regional manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.
“In recent years, federal appropriations for maintenance and construction in our national parks have fallen well short of what is needed to prevent infrastructure from degrading further,” Martin said. “This policy of diverting fee dollars away from parks and towards President Trump’s DC projects will lead to the further degradation of critical infrastructure in our national parks.”
The president has drawn criticism from both sides of the aisle over his recent beautification projects in the nation’s capital, which some have attributed to a desire to impose his personal design preferences on the city.
One of the projects involves coating the bottom of the Reflecting Pool with “American flag blue” paint and, according to the New York Times, awarding the job through a no-bid contract with an ‘inflated’ profit margin to a Virginia company.
Other projects include demolishing the White House’s historic East Wing and replacing it with a 90,000-square-foot ballroom — which the Trump administration maintains is being funded strictly by private donors — and constructing a 250-foot “victory arch.”
“Our National Parks have been underfunded for years and have become increasingly reliant on fee revenue for critical projects,” Martin said in a written statement. “The Trump Administration’s actions to redirect fee revenue to projects in Washington, D.C. and not to parks across the country is concerning.”
Federal law requires that 80% of entrance fee revenue be used in each individual park where that money is raised. The remaining 20% is distributed to sites that collect few or no fees. Acadia collects about $12 million per year in entrance fee revenue, around $10 million of which remains in the park, Martin said.
Like many parks around the country, Acadia has tabled various projects amid funding cuts and more pressing repairs. In 2022, a senior park official said the park’s iconic Jordan Pond House building, where tea and popovers have been served since the late 1800s, would need to be replaced in the next several years.
Last summer, park officials signaled they also wanted to improve accessibility at two heavily visited sites: Hulls Cove Visitors Center and the Sand Beach. At the time, park officials said they hoped that future renovations to both sites would involve the addition of public wheelchair access.
As of Wednesday, Acadia did not have a dedicated spokesperson for media inquiries, and the Bangor Daily News did not receive a response to a request for comment sent to a general park communications email.
“The Department has many funding sources available to spend on deferred maintenance,” a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told the Bangor Daily News in a written statement. “Unlike Barack Obama who spent millions upon millions in taxpayer-funded Great Recession recovery aid that should have gone to struggling families, the Trump administration is looking at different funding mechanisms which include endowment funds and revenue brought in from the sale of park passes. We are grateful to President Donald J. Trump for making D.C. safe and beautiful.”
Fewer than half of the country’s 433 national parks sites charge some sort of visitation fee, according to Emily Douce, acting vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association. The park service collected $400 million in entrance or recreation fees in fiscal year 2023, Martin said.
“While the fountains in DC are important NPS infrastructure that needs to be fixed, they shouldn’t be addressed at the expense of impacting all the other parks that depend on the fee dollars,” Douce said in a written statement.
At Acadia, entrance fees are used to maintain carriage roads, trails, campgrounds, buildings and roads, according to Perrin Doniger, a spokesperson for local nonprofit Friends of Acadia.
They also help expand accessibility to visitors with disabilities, maintain exhibits and operate the park’s free shuttle service, the Island Explorer, Doniger said in a written statement. In 2025, entrance fees covered 72% of the transit system’s operating costs, according to the park.
“Since FLREA was enacted in 2004, previous administrations have not tried to divert this 20% funding to vanity projects, like we are seeing now from the Trump Administration,” Martin said, referring to the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which authorizes national parks to charge entrance fees.
In previous administrations, the 20% of remaining revenue was typically distributed to sites across the country to address repairs, accessibility and safety concerns, and fund educational programs, Douce said.
“For the first time in decades, both visitors and residents of Washington, D.C. are able to enjoy fountains and parks that had been long forgotten and neglected,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, told the Bangor Daily News in a written statement. “Lafayette Park is one of the many ongoing beautification projects in our nation’s capital that will be completed ahead of schedule and under budget just in time for the historic 250th celebrations. The President’s beautification efforts are incredibly popular and are even publicly supported by Democrats who have an ounce of common sense. President Trump promised to make D.C. safe and beautiful again, and he continues to deliver.”
