NATURAL RESOURCES: Down The Hole

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The Interior Department last week announced plans to pour $650,000 down two holes in the ground. The holes: Crystal Cave and Great Onyx Cave, small caverns adjoining Kentucky's huge (51,000 acres, 150 miles of passageways) Mammoth Cave National Park. Ever since 1941, when the U.S. received Mammoth Cave's stalactite-studded underground chambers as a gift from Kentucky, the National Park Service has been thirsting to take over Onyx and Crystal to make up a more attractive tourist package. Last year the Park Service dickered with private owners, agreed to pay $365,000 for low-vaulted Onyx, $285,000 more for Crystal.* If Congress appropriates the funds, the Park Service will spend another $1,200,000 improving roads to make access easier for the half million tourists who go trooping into Mammoth each year.