Court Halts Yosemite Projects

A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked a wide slate of construction projects intended to upgrade visitor services in Yosemite National Park’s beloved mile-wide valley, citing the potential for environmental degradation of the river that runs through it.

In a sharply worded two-page declaration, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said a district judge erred last month by not requiring park officials to stop construction and redo a master plan to protect the Merced River, the scenic tributary that cleaves Yosemite Valley.

The ruling comes just ahead of an Earth Day visit to Yosemite by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton on Thursday. Norton, the Bush administration’s top official overseeing federal lands, is to tour several of the 14 refurbishment projects that had been underway or slated to begin soon.

With the new court order, park officials ordered a halt Tuesday to several construction jobs already underway along the river’s footprint.

Projects hit by the stoppage include reconstruction of Yosemite Lodge, a redevelopment project in Wawona, a headquarters building annex, new employee housing to replace dorms washed away in a 1997 flood and an effort to improve the valley’s aging system of utility pipes.

Two environmental groups, Friends of Yosemite Valley and Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth, challenged the planning document for the Merced River out of concern that park officials had failed to establish daily visitor limits and proper restraints on new development to ensure that the river and traffic-choked valley were not harmed by overuse.

The court challenge put those groups at odds with several other environmental organizations that had worked for years with park planners and the public to draw up new blueprints for protecting the river while allowing rehabilitation of guest facilities on the valley floor.

“Congratulations -- they’ve just handed the job of planning Yosemite’s future to the Bush administration,” said Jay Watson of the Wilderness Society. “This could throw the whole process open, and there’s no telling what future plans might look like.”

Bart Brown, a spokesman for the two groups that challenged the plan, said the park risked becoming overwhelmed by new development.

“This is an opportunity for park officials to finally get it right,” Brown said. “I think it was Ansel Adams who said, when the theater’s full, you don’t put people on the laps of others.”

Greg Adair, Friends of Yosemite Valley co-director, said he welcomed a halt to the extensive logging, grading and other work underway to clear new swaths of earth for the projects.

“The valley plan walks around in green emperor’s clothes,” Adair said. “But it calls for an expansion of two of the valley’s three hotels, for a net increase in asphalt in the valley. It clearly delineates that there will be more traffic congestion. It’s a lot more than a simple redecoration of the valley.”

Scott Gediman, a Yosemite spokesman, said park officials still believed their original plans were on target and they intended to fight the ruling in court. If they are forced to rework the river-planning document, he said, it could delay the start of work for months.

Projects affected, he said, were only those in close proximity to the Merced River. Work on the ambitious effort to rebuild the Lower Yosemite Falls trail would continue, Gediman said.

In its initial ruling on the lawsuit last October, the appeals court urged Yosemite officials to adopt temporary limits to ensure that the river was not harmed while a full study of park user capacity went forward.

The case was sent back to U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii, who late last month refused to toss out the river preservation plan.

The two environmental groups appealed, and on Tuesday, the appeals court issued a two-paragraph order to “clarify” that it wanted to see the National Park Service prepare a new or revised management plan for the river.

Sharon Duggan, the Berkeley attorney who fought the Park Service on behalf of environmentalists, said she was “stunned” by the quick turnaround. “This is another David and Goliath,” she said. “In that kind of scenario, you don’t expect to win.”