Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area was named a national park site in 1954. The very name acknowledges that the park was intended to preserve the area for the American public to fish, camp, boat, and enjoy the outdoors. And yet the National Park Service continues to grant exclusive permits to 25 private vacation cabins on the shoreline at Rickey Point and Sherman Creek – cabins that limit access for the other 1.4 million people who visit each year.

The Interior Department directed the NPS to assess the impact of these cabins. Now that the scoping process is complete and public comments have been taken, the agency needs to conclude how best to proceed with the permits for these exclusive cabins. The report the agency generated is available online at http://parkplanning. nps.gov/documentsList.cfm? projectID=22345. Many of the special-use permit holders who lease their land from the NPS appear to be in violation of park resource protection, according to the report. For that reason the agency ought to withdraw their special-use permits to protect water quality, wildlife and visitor access in the park.

Some skeptics will say that Obama appointees are by nature inimical to private property rights and thus the outcome of NPS deliberations is a foregone conclusion. However, these cabins are not a private property matter. This land belongs to you and me. The people who vacation in these cabins are regulated squatters whose habits and practices now breach the many environmental laws that have come into being since 1954. Adverse possession does not apply. Nor are their cabins legally grandfathered in, by any stretch of the imagination, any more than a boater could lay permanent claim to a patch of Puget Sound.

NPS law prohibits the leasing, renting or granting (through permits) of land if such activity interferes with free public access to public lands. The NPS has even acknowledged in public documents that it has no authority to permit private vacation cabins within Lake Roosevelt. Accordingly, the NPS has identified three alternatives to address the pressing matter of these cabins.

Alternative A is to take no action whatever. Alternative B is to increase the regulation of sewage tanks, irrigation practices, control of noxious weeds, upgrading of dangerous power lines and dozens of other outmoded practices. Alternative C is to withdraw the special use permits altogether. This alternative best complies with Interior’s 2007 report, which found that the NPS should not renew special use permits that limit long-term access to public lands.

Some of these cabins still have the original septic systems installed, which are often comprised of a large metal drum or single-chamber concrete tanks. These systems are now cracked, rusted and leaking sewage into the ground. Poorly functioning septic systems degrade water quality and pose a risk to public health and to the health of the shoreline. Again, the land and water they are polluting belong to all of us. Just so, urban residents are required to hook into public sewer lines. Other practices would be harder for NPS to regulate.

Some owners of vacation cabins burn garbage and vegetation on the beach, use herbicides, garden with non-native plants, maintain grass lawns up to high-water lines and use vegetation management practices that have proved to be inconsistent with other portions of the recreation area. Some owners encourage non-natural wildlife-human interactions, by attracting birds with feeders, for example, or by drawing large and small animals through ineffective garbage containment.

Such practices are unsafe for cabin owners and wildlife; they create government and public liabilities and costs. In the event of a catastrophic wildfire, our tax dollars would have to go to protect the cabins.

Lake Roosevelt, like every national park site, belongs to all of us, including the land on which these cabins reside. It’s time for the Park Service to end illegal privatization of public land at the expense of the 1.4 million visitors each year. Let’s create an equal-opportunity park for later generations to enjoy.