By: Jessica Montoya, Senior Director of Federal Relations at Trust for Public Land & Danielle Guttman, Conservation Outreach Manager at the Appalachian Mountain Club
Shared green space is an essential part of healthy, resilient, and connected communities, yet 1 in 3 Americans do not live within a 10-minute walk of a park. Often, the country’s poorest neighborhoods have the fewest parks. Trust for Public Land and the Appalachian Mountain Club believe everyone deserves quality outdoor space and are committed to ensuring park access for every ZIP code.
The National Park Service’s Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership grant program (ORLP) is an important tool for bridging this park equity gap. Established in 2014, ORLP is funded through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) as a nationally competitive grant program available to municipalities of 30,000 or more residents.
ORLP grants help create and improve state and locally owned parks, particularly in disadvantaged communities. Priority is given to projects in “park deserts” and those leveraging pre-existing community resources. Through six funding cycles since 2014, $126 million in federal funds have supported 97 ORLP projects while leveraging more than $80 million in non-federal funds.
Mifflin Square Park, Philadelphia. Credit: SEAMAAC
The ORLP program has significantly impacted the Delaware River Watershed region. For example, Trust for Public Land and community partners successfully utilized ORLP dollars to revitalize Mifflin Square Park in South Philadelphia. This 3.5-acre park in an underserved neighborhood was in a state of disrepair, but ORLP funding facilitated a full-scale renovation including a new playground, splash pad, and outdoor furniture. Today, Mifflin Square Park provides meaningful recreation opportunities to over 13,000 area residents. ORLP funding also supported the creation of dynamic public parks in Camden, Trenton, and Wilmington.
The bipartisan, bicameral Outdoors for All Act (S.448 and H.1065) codifies and improves the ORLP program, ensuring a secure pathway for competitive funding for communities without adequate local parks. Codifying the ORLP program would ensure that this important program continues to exist and receive funding from Congress over the long term, thereby ensuring that the National Park Service and partners can continue to use ORLP to support local parks.
Additionally, the Outdoors for All Act lowers the eligible population threshold from 30,000 to 25,000, allows smaller communities to “cluster” together as one applicant, and expands eligibility to federally recognized tribes, enabling underserved rural and Indigenous communities to apply for ORLP funding. Critically, this bill comes at no cost to taxpayers.
Trust for Public Land and the Appalachian Mountain Club urge Congress to support robust funding for local parks through the ORLP program and the Outdoors for All Act. You can support the passage of the Outdoors for All Act by asking your Member of Congress to add their name as a co-sponsor and encouraging them to recognize the value of shared green space.
About Trust for Public Land
Trust for Public Land (TPL) is a national nonprofit working to connect everyone to the benefits and joys of the outdoors. As a leader in equitable access to the outdoors, TPL works with communities to create parks and protect public land where they are needed most. Since 1972, TPL has protected 4 million acres of public land, created 5,364 parks, trails, schoolyards, and iconic outdoor places, raised $93 billion in public funding for parks and public lands, and connected nearly 9.4 million people to the outdoors.
About the Appalachian Mountain Club
The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering the protection, enjoyment, and understanding of the outdoors. Since 1876, AMC has made it a mission to protect the mountains, forests, waters, and trails in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions through hands-on stewardship, scientific research, and public policy advocacy. The Appalachian Mountain Club envisions a world where our natural resources are healthy, loved, and always protected, and where the outdoors occupies a place of central importance in every person’s life.