Tri-City community’s help will be needed for Manhattan Project park

Community partnerships will be important for the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which includes Hanford’s B Reactor, said National Park Service officials at a workshop Friday in Richland.

The park service plans to hold off on establishing any “friends of the park” group for the new park through this year while it learns more about the park’s home communities, said Tracy Atkins, interim superintendent of the park. The new park has sites at Hanford, Los Alamos, N.M., and Oak Ridge, Tenn.

But it would be helpful to have a nonprofit organization that would set up a trust to accept any donations for the park. The park superintendent would work with the group to determine together how money would be spent in the community on projects, such as printing brochures, supporting volunteers or putting on events.

National parks would not be what they are today without partnerships and philanthropy, said Ray Murray, chief of the park service partnership program for the Pacific west region.

The park service has a maintenance backlog of about $11.9 billion, about half of that for transportation projects, and there will not ever be enough money for projects that would benefit the parks.

But local communities are having success raising money for parks projects that resonate with the public, such as trails, he said.

This story was originally published February 26, 2016 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Tri-City community’s help will be needed for Manhattan Project park."