Industry News
Ski areas across the country are beginning to feel impacts from the shutdown of the Federal Government, on top of huge cuts to the Federal workforce earlier this year. Since October 1, almost 750,000 Federal workers have been furloughed, including 12,744 workers out of the 32,390 current employees of the Forest Service, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture Lapse in Funding Plan. A little over 15,000 of those employees include those necessary to “protect life and property,” including wildland firefighters, law enforcement, and leadership.
Most wildland firefighters work roughly from May until sometime in October. Some permanent employees will continue to work through the fall, providing maintenance for equipment, additional training, and response if late season fires emerge. Another key activity that can happen in the fall, as well as the spring, are controlled burns, which have become a key part of forest management. The U.S.D.A. plan for the shutdown specifically identifies prescribed fires as an activity that will cease while the government is not open. Though firefighters remain available to respond to new fires, critical fuel reduction work likely will be postponed in national forests across the country.
Another activity that has been ceased during the shutdown is the processing of Special Use Permits, which has direct impacts on the ski industry. Ski areas operating on public land need a special use permit from the Federal Government, usually the Forest Service, but there are a few ski areas in the National Parks. Ski areas needing to renew their permits this year could get stuck waiting for their approvals to go through. Beyond normal operations, Forest Service approvals are required for improvement and expansion projects, everything from sprucing up a base area to installing new chairlifts and expanding into new terrain. These approvals can take as long as several years to go through, and ski areas usually like to start on improvement projects as early as they can in the spring. Delays in approvals this fall could already have impacts on next season’s improvement projects.
Almost all of the ski areas in Colorado operate on Forest Service land. At a recent event held in Breckenridge, Colorado, that brought together Chief Operating Officers from many of the major ski areas in the state, several expressed concern over delays and minimal staffing brought on by the government shutdown. “We’re all waiting for our operation plans to be signed. Hopefully that will happen soon, but we’re still pushing on,” Rob Goodell, Chief Operating Officer of Loveland, Colorado, told The Aspen Times. Alan Henceroth, Chief Operating Officer at Arapahoe Basin, Colorado, added that “the last several months have just been brutal for our Forest Service employees locally.” Many local Forest Service District Offices saw drastic cuts to their workforce as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s legally dubious purge of the Federal Government from earlier this year.
With no end to the shutdown in sight and the start of skiing operations less than a few months away, ski areas could find themselves between a permitting rock and a staffing hard place going into the upcoming season. Even after the government reopens, many district offices will find themselves inundated with huge workloads and just a fraction of the staff that they had a year ago.
