1st Yosemite Restoration Plan Unveiled

The National Park Service on Wednesday released the first of two sweeping plans that administrators hope will clear the way for the long-delayed restoration of a more pristine, untrammeled Yosemite Valley.

The Merced River Plan may one day allow the removal of parking lots, reconfiguration of roads, relocation of employee housing and closure or relocation of some campgrounds. It probably would allow reconstruction of the flood-damaged Yosemite Lodge, but would likely mean that hundreds of campsites lost in the 1997 deluge would not be restored.

Twenty years after such changes were first envisioned, park service administrators hope that the new plan will jump-start efforts to reverse decades of environmental degradation while maintaining the current approximate level of public access.

The Clinton administration is pushing hard for completion of the plan--and a more detailed blueprint to be released this spring--as part of a drive to secure an environmental legacy before the president leaves office a year from now.

Yosemite certainly could use a rebirth. Last year John Muir’s “temple” was desecrated by a series of disasters, both natural and man-made, including the slayings of three tourists and a park employee by an alleged serial killer.

“The last 18 months have been really trying for Yosemite,” said Jay Watson, Western regional director for the Wilderness Society, a national environmental group. “I am thrilled that, in the face of that, the park service is making real progress toward long-needed changes. It’s time to move ahead.”

But first the river plan must undergo two months of scrutiny by a public that has strong sentiments about virtually every waterfall, bridge and tent cabin in the storied park.

The plan has many backers in the environmental community, but also opponents, who believe that it was devised too hurriedly and probably does not go far enough to restore Muir’s aesthetic. They would preserve, at all costs, the 81-mile stretch of the Merced River that meanders and cascades through the park, even if it meant greater limits on public access.

“This plan should be looking at what is the best for the river,” said Joyce Eden, a member of the Sierra Club committee that oversees Yosemite. “It should be natural resource-based alone, and it’s not. That is the problem.”

Eden said a preoccupation with accommodating visitors could mean excessive construction and an over-commercialization of areas that should remain unspoiled.

Rivers like the Merced are supposed to undergo studies on how to preserve and enhance their natural qualities. The federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act requires such plans to be made within three years of a river’s placement on the list. But after 13 years, the park service is coming to the task only following litigation by the Sierra Club.

The environmental organization filed a federal lawsuit last year contending that the park service’s reconstruction and widening of El Portal Road into Yosemite was spilling debris and concrete into the river, damaging it. In July, U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii ordered some of the roadwork to cease, directing the federal agency to complete the river study within a year.

The result is a 1,300-page tome that describes five alternatives for the Merced River, recommending the option that planners said best balances river restoration with visitor uses. One alternative would make no changes at all, another would expand recreation and public access to the river, while three others would place varying levels of restraint on growth and development.

Park planners say their recommended option would allow for construction and improvement of units from Yosemite Lodge damaged in severe flooding three years ago. Eden and some others, including Sierra Club elder statesman David Brower, say they fear that the redesigned lodge would be too large and pricey to maintain the character of Yosemite.

Similarly, the plan would permit reconstruction of a parking lot for the old Campground Six, although that area is within the river’s flood plain. And it would leave room for construction of a mass transit facility, perhaps to help provide expanded bus service to the valley from some “gateway” towns, potentially cutting car traffic.

The most restrictive alternative would return Yosemite Valley to more of a “19th century-like condition,” said Chip Jenkins, the park’s chief of strategic planning. The park’s planners said they decided not to recommend this option because it would too severely limit opportunities for the public to enjoy the mile-wide and 7-mile-long valley, which includes the granite monoliths El Capitan and Half Dome.

Officials Seek a Moderate Course

Yosemite’s new superintendent, David A. Mihalic, and the park service’s regional director together will have final say over plans for the park.

In his three months on the job, Mihalic has made it clear that he will strike a moderate course and not give in to shrill voices, whether they represent the most austere or pro-development visions of the 110-year-old park.

Many environmentalists seem confident that the park service will strike the proper balance. Brian Huse, Pacific regional director for the National Parks Conservation Assn., said he expects the river plan to clear the way for a Yosemite “still a far cry from what John Muir experienced, but also a far cry from the way things are today.”

Delays in formulating the plan have prevented the park service from spending the vast majority of nearly $200 million the agency received to repair campgrounds, roads, parking lots and other facilities washed away in the 1997 flood.

The importance of the work was emphasized in October when U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt took the unusual step of personally coming to Yosemite to introduce Mihalic. Babbitt has said repeatedly that he is determined that plans to protect Yosemite will be in place by the end of the administration.

If Yosemite already was stagnating when 1999 began, the year brought an added sense of foreboding to park service offices. Attendance hit an eight-year low.

The trouble began in February with the disappearance of three park visitors from Eureka. Carole Sund, her daughter Juliana, 15, and family friend Silvina Pelosso, 16, later turned up dead. A local handyman was charged with the killings after he was arrested in a fourth slaying, that of 26-year-old park naturalist Joie Armstrong.

Problems continued in June, when a young Colorado outdoorsman died in a massive rockslide at the valley’s edge. Dozens of guest and employee cabins in Curry Village had to be closed at the start of the summer season because of the instability of a portion of the valley wall.

In the fall, a parachutist plunged to her death off El Capitan. The 60-year-old Santa Barbara woman was attempting to prove that such jumps were safe and shouldn’t be prohibited by rangers.

The park service suffered a much less dramatic setback when two counties backed out of a cooperative plan to bus more visitors to Yosemite Valley, protesting that the plan favored a few “gateway” towns at the expense of others.

But a more limited version of the Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System will commence service this summer from Merced, Mariposa and Mono counties in the hope of reducing the flood of 7,000 cars that arrives on a typical summer day in the valley.

Park planners will take the Merced River Plan on the road in a series of a dozen presentations and public hearings around the state that begins Jan. 31. One of the sessions will be held Feb. 3, from 4 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Griffith Park.