The Los Alamos Monitor covered last week’s release of a Governmental Accountability Office audit of the Valles Caldera Trust in a front-page story today. Click here to read this article in its entirety. A portion of the story is included below:
The Valles Caldera Trust is at least five years behind a timetable set in 2004 to become financially self-sustaining.
A congressional report by the Government Accountability Office released Friday found that the preserve’s governing board still hasn’t developed an adequate management plan for its role as a federal corporation….
To measure progress, the GAO evaluation used the trust’s 2004 report to Congress, in which the officials laid out the next two five-year plans, starting with completing a National Environmental Policy Act analyses for developing a system of road and trails and getting started on building a basic interpretive center and a science and education facility.
But, five years later, only the science and grazing programs at the preserve have moved into phase two. If the current public use and access is completed on its current schedule in mid-2010, recreation can begin to move into phase two as well.
“Thus, at the close of fiscal year 2009, the Trust continued to work mostly on phase one of its programs and activities — at least five years behind its anticipated schedule,” GAO reported.
Recreation, infrastructure and forest management are still expected to be in phase one, with only another five years to go before Congress, according to the founding legislation, could decide to stop appropriating money and possibly let the property default to the Forest Service.
