Norton Backs Restoration Plan, Effort to Cut Traffic in Yosemite

Interior Secretary Gale Norton declared unwavering support Thursday for efforts to modernize visitor facilities in Yosemite National Park’s congested, mile-wide valley, just days after a federal court blocked the bulk of the rehabilitation work.

Paying an Earth Day visit to one of America’s most beloved and beleaguered national parks, Norton expressed confidence that several suspended construction projects would go forward, despite lawsuits by two environmental groups.

With the cascading waters of Yosemite Falls as a backdrop, Norton said that the push to restore facilities in Yosemite reflects “the commitment President Bush made to improve and protect national parks.”

Norton, the Bush administration’s steward of federal lands, also voiced her approval of the most controversial portion of Yosemite’s long-debated blueprint for the valley -- a contentious proposal to slash the number of parking spaces and bus most day-use visitors in from remote lots at the park’s edge.

“I recognize that most vacationing families would like to stay in their cars,” Norton said. “What I’ve seen is that people can really enjoy themselves a lot more with a well-run shuttle system than trying to find a parking space.”

But park officials made it clear during Norton’s visit that it probably would be at least a decade before they take a serious look at instituting an out-of-valley shuttle system.

The idea, cemented when the plan won approval during the final days of the Clinton administration in 2000, has drawn the ire of residents in surrounding communities who worry that it would scare away visitors.

“Ten years from now, we’ll get ready to start looking at how we would do it,” said Mike Tollefson, superintendent of Yosemite National Park. “And we’ll go back out to all the communities. Technology will be different. Visitor flow will be different. And it will be a conversation that will be reopened 10 years from now.”

Jay Watson of the Wilderness Society, one of the groups that pushed hardest for the network of remote parking lots and shuttles, said he was troubled that park officials were putting off the shift to out-of-valley shuttles.

Last year, Tollefson said it would be several years before the park took serious steps toward the shuttle system.

“We made these tough and visionary decisions about parking and traffic. Now they’re being put off,” Watson said. “It’s tough to see them slip so far out into the future.”

While he lamented delays, another segment of the environmental community pressed in the opposite direction.

Greg Adair of Friends of Yosemite Valley, one of the two environmental groups that sued the park to block its valley rehabilitation push, said he could only conclude after Norton’s visit that “the Bush administration is going to defend this plan to the death.”

As the Interior secretary departed for a helicopter tour of the park and lunch at the Wawona Hotel, which is celebrating its 125th year of operation, Adair headed out on a short tour of his own -- a hike into a field of stumps, all that remained of about 100 ponderosa pines toppled to make room for a parking lot near Yosemite Lodge.

“People were shocked to see this,” he said. “These were some of the oldest trees in the park. What we’re seeing is devastation.”

Adair said the rehabilitation effort needs to be suspended while park officials figure out just how many visitors can be allowed each day without harming the valley and the Merced River.

He said the plan would mean more trees cut, more pavement and more development in the valley.

Tollefson disagreed, saying the master plan would yield fewer acres of blacktop and even fewer hotel rooms.

Meanwhile, broad expanses of wetlands that have been gobbled by campgrounds would be restored.

“For folks to say it’s a development plan is really a misnomer,” Tollefson said. “It’s really a restoration plan.”

The final arbiter of the plan’s success may well be the courts.

On Tuesday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked more than half a dozen construction projects that were just getting underway as part of the restoration effort.

The court ordered the work stopped while a decision was made whether park planners had failed to fully address the potential environmental fallout for the Merced River, which meanders through the heart of the valley.

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

Friends of Yosemite Valley and Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Growth mounted their legal challenge 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.