Visitors Annoyed as Drinking Water Turned Brown in California’s Smallest National Park Amid Shutdown
“Hey, this water is brown. We’ve got to get water for these kids,” outdoor school director Andrew Snow demanded after noticing that the drinking water he had squeezed out of a spigot looked “pretty gnarly.” He visited the park on a school picnic, and not having access to quality drinking water felt upsetting. After following the suggestion of a camp host, Snow rigged up the spigot and left it open for 30 to 40 minutes. The water, likely browning due to fallen leaves, suspended dirt, and natural tannin, now became clearer. In a conversation with SFGate, Snow revealed that the ongoing government shutdown has caused California's Pinnacles National Park to experience a decline in its facilities, prompting visitors to leave disappointed and vexed.
Pinnacles National Park is a little green gem of the Golden State. Towering rocky spires that loom from the hills of Gabilan tell the forgotten stories of its formation. As NPS explains, the park was once a plain ground drenched in parched mud, when the crust beneath it cracked up. Volcanoes exploded, spewing fountains of hot magma. Underneath, the tectonic plates erupted, pushing the sediment even further and upwards. Mountains materialized out of the shadows. Cracks and fissures became upholstered with molten lava, which, eventually, cooled down to carve the canyon valleys, oak woodlands, and Talus caves. Today, millions of visitors leave their footprints on the volcanic and granite soils of the park. In 2024 alone, Pinnacles’ mountain winds swished over 354 thousand visitor footprints, per NPS.
The park's campgrounds are punctuated with utility spigots that pull water from groundwater springs. At least one maintenance worker is always required who can flush the water system every few days and keep the water suitable for drinking. As the government shutdown drags on, many of these workers are not available due to furloughs. With no sign of the shutdown coming to an end and a scant number of rangers available, the park, nowadays, is making the visitors “moan,” as a Reddit user described. After arriving at the west visitor center, they discovered that the road to the trailhead was closed. They were forced to travel an additional four-mile stretch.
“Why can’t this be communicated online?” the visitor grunted, questioning why these closures are not mentioned on the park’s website. In reply, u/notsogreattimeline noted that the website is not updated due to the government shutdown. With half of the national park employees laid off and half furloughed, it has made it challenging for departments to keep the websites up-to-date. Visitors also describe facilities that have fallen into disrepair and that remain unavailable and harder to access. With only a skeleton crew left on duty, it has become challenging for the park to maintain its basic facilities, including trash removal, cleanliness, and restroom sanitation.
To make matters worse, the administration is planning to lay off more than 10,000 employees during the shutdown, per CNN. This means national parks like Pinnacles could face even terrible staffing shortages and slackening facilities. Recently, when John Osborne and his wife visited the park from Clovis to celebrate their 42nd wedding anniversary, they noticed that the visitor center, the nature center, and the bookstore, some of the most visited areas of the park, remain closed for business, per KSBW Action News 8. Overall, the situation demands that visitors “expecting anything of national parks during the government shutdown doesn’t seem super reasonable,” one person said. Time might heal the matter, but that time hasn’t arrived yet.
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