Georgetown’s boathouse plans delayed yet again
Posted by: Chris Heller in News, Vox Populi, tags: Boathouse, Georgetown, Jack's Boathouse, Lobbying, National Park Service, Sisyphean
These days, $1,000,000 won’t get you very far—at least not on the shores of the Potomac.
Despite spending seven figures on lobbying efforts aimed to get the National Park Service to approve the construction of a new boathouse in the C&O Canal National Historic Park, the University hasn’t gotten the NPS to budge an inch.
In fact, Georgetown’s dreams of a new boathouse may be slipping further away, according to the Georgetown Current‘s Carol Buckley. In last week’s issue [PDF] of the Current, Buckley reported that “new information” led the NPS to “expand the scope” of its Environmental Impact Study.
The unnamed information is “significant enough to lead to additional public meetings,” according to NPS spokesperson Bill Line, who Buckley interviewed. “I cannot say when the entire process is going to be completed,” Line said.
When coupled with the University’s dwindling payments to the Carmen Group, the lobbying firm hired to push NPS to approve the plan, this new focus on the Environmental Impact Survey suggests that the chances of a new boathouse are slim.
From January to March of 2010, the University paid $5,000 to the Carmen Group, which follows the spending pattern it established in the last half of 2009. So, what did the University get for $5,000?
“No direct contact with the National Park Service, but ongoing consultation[s] with Georgetown with regard to environmental documentation,” according to public disclosure forms.
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