Barack Obama to Designate Waterfall as New National Park

Next week Barack Obama is expected to sign legislation that will create a national park from 35 acres of historical sites that surround a 77 foot high waterfall in New Jersey. It will be the first national park Obama will designate during his presidency.

The tall waterfall is known as the “Great Falls,” and has been featured in a philosophical poem by William Carlos Williams, and even as a nice spot for a murder in a Sopranos episode. Williams’s poem focuses upon Sam Hatch, who jumped over the falls, and later gained notoriety for becoming the first known person to survive a ride over New York’s Niagara Falls.

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Beyond its intrinsic beauty, the waterfall and the surrounding community of Paterson, New Jersey are rich in history, lending the area greater credentials for obtaining coveted national park status. The Great Falls area of New Jersey is considered to have been one of the key starting locations for America’s Industrial Revolution, when machines began to be used on a large scale to manufacture goods in factories. The Falls themselves were used for water power, even to produce the first Colt .45 revolvers.

But while some people will cheer the new park which will be created as part of a huge public lands legislation package, others are frowning down upon the development.

Creating a New National Park Never Without Controversy

While designating a new national park looks great on a President’s resume, the decision to make a new national park is almost always accompanied by criticism. The essential issues involve 1) whether or not an area is truly significant nationally (i.e. to all Americans and their history), and 2) whether or not the money used to create and maintain a new national park would be better spent elsewhere.

A related issue is that for most communities who live near to national parks, the uptick in tourism is terrific for the local economy. That’s exactly what some residents of Paterson, New Jersey are hoping the new national park will mean for them. Faraway in the country of Scotland, one group of communities has even begun to ponder if they should create a national park to help stop their population from shrinking due to a lack of jobs. Residents of the U.S.’s Florida Keys also have thrown around an idea to get the Keys designated as a national park, not so much for tourism (but could it really hurt?), but because they claim they don’t have the funds to properly protect important beach habitats.

But can economic and local desires cloud the rationale for making certain areas national parks, and also subsequently diminish the national park brand? There are some people who certainly believe so– and the Bush Administration was among them. According to the Associated Press, “the bill [for the new park] comes two years after the National Park Service, under the Bush administration, declined to recommend protected status for the Great Falls.” The Washington Times notes that “a 2006 National Park Service study said the site is neither suitable nor feasible, the park system already includes enough waterfalls and similar cultural sites, and Paterson is already well-protected by the state. The study noted that Niagara Falls has never been designated a national park because it is protected by New York.”

So what do you think? Is the new national park a good idea and great news for New Jersey? Or is it a waste of tax dollars that could be used elsewhere?

Photo Credit: Tony the Misfit on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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