BIRMINGHAM— U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell on Wednesday commended Alabama and Birmingham for their outdoor recreation areas while urging Alabamians to push for reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federal program that helped create and develop many of the state’s outdoor recreation areas.
Jewell visited Birmingham’s Red Mountain and East Lake parks as part of a tour to celebrate the LWCF program on its 50th anniversary and to seek its continuance.
Jim Byard Jr., director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, which manages the LWCF program in Alabama, said the program benefits every section of the state.
“We look forward to 50 more years of LWCF support in all 67 of our counties,” Byard said.
Since its creation in 1964, LWCF has provided Alabama with $66 million supporting 892 outdoor projects across the state, Byard said.
Jewell said parks and green spaces are good for the vitality of a community and its residents, particularly children.
“What you have here in this park and what I saw at Red Mountain Park gives people from the city of Birmingham a reason to get outside,” she said. “Those kids, they’re not working out, they’re playing; they are not learning, they are exploring. They are in the best classroom there is which is the classroom with no walls.”
Jewell added more could be done if the LWCF received its full funding from offshore oil and gas production royalties. Only once its history has the program received all of its intended funding, she said.
“The six hundred thousand dollars coming to Alabama would be double or triple that size if we had full and permanent funding,” Jewell said.
Speaking in Fort Wayne on Tuesday, Jewell announced a $682,757 LWCF allocation to Alabama for the current year.
Contact: Jim Plott, Larry Childers